Take a photo of a barcode or cover
2.99 AVERAGE
2.99 AVERAGE
challenging
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Extremely disappointing. It was a chore to get through this mess of a "novel." No point in even writing a review.
this book was ok. i think the characters sometimes lack depth (i honestly didn't really like any of them) and i wish there was more s*x in it. honestly it was kind of boring but it mentions foucault and other french post-structuralist philosophers and in it so it made me feel smart reading it lmao and also i learned about french politics in the 80s and 90s which i didn't know about which was cool
dark
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Writing style just didn’t really agree with me and I struggled to form an emotional connection with any of the characters
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Homophobia, Misogyny, Transphobia, Vomit, Antisemitism
A (gay) friend of mine said this novel was "too gay" even for him, which is perhaps understandable, given that it's caught up in a very specific niche of late-80s to mid-00s French intellectual gay life. But I think that we (gays, the literary community, the culture at large) are still uncomfortable with fully developed and fully honest gay characters in literature, and this novel does a very good job or forging some new (for me, at least) ground in this area. Garcia's characters felt on the same plane as some of the characters of Genet, but he approaches them with more distance than Genet, less as fantastical beings and more as just beings. It's a very ambitious novel, with a lot of politics and intellectual history bound up in it, but what ultimately carries through is the personal politics of these characters' lives. There's a lot of tragedy, but can't we say that about the recent history of homosexuals--especially those dealing with AIDS--in general? Garcia captures a lot of truth here, and does so very thoughtfully.