What I Did Wrong: A Novel

What I Did Wrong is a dazzling return to fiction for John Weir, a romance that embraces its objects—from the endlessly bewildering question of what it means to be a man to the aspect of New York in all its manic and heartbreaking grandeur. It is a powerfully moving—and often disarmingly funny—book about loss, character, and sexuality in the post-AIDS era, a survivor’s tale in an age when all the certainties have lost their logic and force.

Tom, a forty-two-year-old English professor, watch...