The Gifts of the Body.(Brief Article)

Rebecca Brown. HarperCollins, $17.50 (160p) ISBN 0-06-017159-6

The unnamed narrator of this beautifully controlled, immensely affecting novel, is a home care aid who helps those afflicted with AIDS. In a series of brief chapters written in casually vernacular language, Brown depicts this woman's visits to a varied group of victims, including young gay men, an elderly widow infected through a blood transfusion and a fellow volunteer. The narrator brings to them the gifts of tender care, compassion and respect. They in turn give her the gifts of insight, openness and intimacy; they teach her about dignity and courage. She observes the inexorability of their decline: …