"Danny Kelley is born into an Australian working class family from which he longs to escape. It is his need to make something of himself that propels much of the novel, which follows him for about two decades, from 1993 to 2010." Read More
"In The Snow Queen, Cunningham reminds us that no matter the form in which love arrives, we should consider ourselves lucky." Read More
Dan Lopez peoples his sea narratives with gay men, both white and of color, and in doing so reexamines the genre, not unlike Annie’s Proulx’s reexamination of the cowboy narrative in Brokeback Mountain. Read More
Many of the characters in The Days of Anna Madrigal may be from the past, but they fully inhabit a contemporary world. Maupin’s Tales of the City novels are nothing if not a reflection of the times in which they were written, and Anna Madrigal is no exception. Read More
Lamb often leaves his characters on a limb right before changing perspectives, and so we want to read further because of the most basic--and essential--reasons: we need to know what happens next. Read More
"While the juxtaposition of what is told with what is suggested provides a good deal of tension in the novel, we are also gripped by the time and place of Leavitt’s story: Lisbon in the summer 1940, a year into World War II..." Read More
In The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells (Ecco/HarperCollins) Andrew Sean Greer slyly and movingly takes Thomas Wolfe’s observation that “you can’t go home again” and turns it on its head. Read More
"One doesn't think of Burns as courageous or engaged--his great intellect and rather supercilious attitude had let him float above everything -- but writing so explicitly about gays, and advocating for them, in 1947 was an act of enormous courage. "
David Margolick took some time to talk with the Lambda Literary Review about his interest in John Horne Burns, the challenges of writing about a person who was often disliked, and learning about twentieth century gay life. Read More
It’s a sadly familiar story in American literature: an alcoholic gay writer of great talent comes to a tragic end. Think Hart Crane. Think Charles Jackson. And now think John Horne Burns, the subject of David Margolick’s enlightening biography, Dreadful: The Short Life and Gay Times of John Horne Burns (Other Press). Read More
