Book Review: 'First Comes Love' (1996)

The vivid autobiography First Comes Love combines two familiar genres: the feminist confessional (''How I outgrew my first husband'') and the elegiac AIDS memoir (''How my partner was cut down in the prime of life''). Marion Winik — an author and NPR commentator — married Tony knowing he was gay, HIV-positive, and interested in drugs. Her own drug interest waned when their two healthy sons were born. For a while the happy family (she's HIV-negative) defied the odds and expectations. But Tony's AIDS, his drug addictions, and Winik's betrayals wrecked their marriage. They separated; he came home only to die. The feminist confessional feels too quick and breezy. But the AIDS memoir sweeps all before it, with headlong honesty and courage. Winik admits her failings: ''I never really believed he was dying ... and therefore couldn't empathize.'' However, she empathizes posthumously, with a heartrending chapter written from her husband's point of view: ''She will see his children grow up and he will not.'' B+