From the moment I read the first line of this book, In those days, everyone knew everyone on the island,...
Metaphysical Dog is a grandly, at times depressingly valedictory collection... Read More
The Art of Joy is a novel of ideas. It’s concerned with birth, life, and death, the education of women, politics, social and cultural history, sexuality, free love, psychoanalysis, familial bonds, childrearing, and more. Read More
How does one write a biography of someone who has been dead for 40 years, was a bit of a recluse their whole life, and whom few people really knew. If you are Mary Blume, and the subject is Cristobal Balenciaga, one of fashion's most unique designers, you focus on the fashion itself... Read More
Early in his memoir, Beye tells us that he hopes the reader will finish the book “with a better understanding of the obstacles and shoals the gay male must navigate just to grow up and assume the responsibilities of adulthood.” In clean, elegant prose, Beye does just that. My Husband and My Wives is an engrossing, moving and often witty take one gay man’s life. Read More
On its surface, the story of Coral Glynn appears simple: the titular nurse Coral arrives at Hart House to care for an elderly woman dying of cancer, and her son, Major Clement Hart, takes a shine to her. In less deft hands, this material would be ripe for all sorts of weeping and rending of garments, but Cameron works with a deft hand, never succumbing to histrionics. Read More
By Blood, Ellen Ullman’s latest novel, is a noir gem. The novel is creepy-exciting and skillfully ironic at almost every turn, with a narrator’s voice snaking through the measured text. It is a voice that is appalling, brilliantly perverted, cunning and smart—and desperate for redemption. Read More
Can something true but unbearable happen out of the sense of wonder? Is one addicted to the gaze that follows...
The Dubious Salvation of Jack V. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is a gay coming-of-age novel by newcomer Jacques Strauss, and that much information alone is telling. If, for instance, you’ve noted that Jack and Jacques are in fact the same name, you may be asking yourself, “Could The Dubious Salvation be an autobiographical first novel?” Read More
