Reviews

Queer literary fiction following a young unnamed man nicknamed Nene, attending to Juan, a dying man in an abandoned institution in the middle of the desert. Connecting through the work of Jan Gay, an undervalued queer author and activist from the early 20th century, their rediscovery of her work and life is intercepted by archival documents and flashbacks of their personal experiences as gay men.

Important themes on historical and scientific erasure and manipulation, rediscovering and passing on knowledge, mental illness, queer history and culture, sexuality and identity, latinidad, etc are touched upon in this book so it was an enriching experiences for me in addition to discover unknown figures of queer history.

Structurally it’s not a linear progression, but a series of vignettes depicting either the protagonists life or historical events.

The writing style also felt very eclectic in style and quite experimental with the use of cinematic screenplay-like writing or pages with just a few lines of dialogue, with an almost surreal feel to it. The desert and abandoned setting also added to this psychedelic atmosphere.

With the addition of real reproduced documents (some with redacted text) , this books more than flirts with other genres like historical fiction and non fiction, plenty of other cultural and literary references too.

The heavy use of mixed media and eclectic writing style, in addition to the non linear structure, lack of resolved end, sometimes clunky dialogue made for a very challenging read, as it sometimes pulled me out of the story and not connected to the characters.

Despite some personal reservations on the story itself and the structure, the themes really makes this an important and enriching book for any queer readers.

mckenzie_reads's review against another edition

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This novel was too experimental and obtuse for my preferences

drlark's review against another edition

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I've read a bunch of queer historical books of late, and this one was just not hooking me. The short vignettes were not doing it.

pnwbibliophile's review against another edition

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slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.75

Dissonance. Each piece of this I should have loved based off my own reading proclivities and identity. Yet I often didn’t enjoy the pieces and they largely failed to meld together for me into something larger than the sum of their parts. I appreciate the attempt at examining queer identity and erasure in this creative way, but it fell flat for me. I feel terrible that I didn’t like this more.

I think my dissonance, my lack of attachment, stems primarily from the writing tone. Even in the more tender moments of dialogue between the main character and the old man, the voice still had this sterile, stripped, clinical feel. I yearned for more emotional bravado tackling such emotional themes. In fact, stylistically this would have been an unapologetically queer act of protest against the clinical way homosexuals were portrayed in the blackout text had the author written in a more emotional or mildly poetic manner. Stripped bare of real emotion, it felt like a queer person giving into what the misguided people in that original text were saying about us. It also felt contrived and overly academic in a manner that felt overbearing at times. The writing tone combined with the contrived structure was off-putting. I do appreciate the ingenuity of undertaking a more unconventional structure.

This is speculative fiction, which is known for bouncing around and often not having anything for the reader to latch onto, but this also lacked any driving action or question to make me want to read on. The question of what the main character was finding out in his research or even the question of who he was or who the old man was was not really enough to draw me in. I also was left grasping as to the answers of those questions and not in a prophetic, “it doesn’t matter” way.

The editorial team also did a poor job with a few elements. The photos and other insertions were far too small such that some were barely legible. I listened to the audiobook and ebook simultaneously and pages were simply not read on the audiobook when they easily could have been. For photos in the audiobook, no reference was made when they occurred or what they entailed. Reference to the insertions was made at the end of both the ebook and audiobook and yet what the audiobook said did not match the ebook, which was hard to follow. Why were these left to the end as well? Context after the fact when I can’t see these insertions without flipping back and forth a thousand times felt both droningly academic and missed their moment to be left at the very end. A page of blackouts was also read differently to what was in the ebook. For receiving the National Book Award, I would have expected these mistakes to have been ironed out with a Big Five publishing team.

sureitsonlyalan's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

paulasnotsosecretdiary's review against another edition

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dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

destiniev's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I loved a lot about this book. It was very Freudian/ Jungian which my psychoanalyst heart loved. It was also interesting hearing about the Sex Variant study and all the history and stories that were erased. I also enjoyed Juan and the narrator’s conversations. There were some parts that felt like they were not executed quite right or some parts that didn’t hold my attention but the emotions and the thoughts that this brought up is making this a 5 star read for me. I also think if you are studying psychology, queer studies or both you should definitely read this book!

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