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3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
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
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
sad plotless litfic. what's not to love?
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
A geography of gay intimacy
—
Out of print in this translation for a while, this republished novel is a canonical text that explores the geography of gay intimacy, a shape of love that is not heteronormative, that isn’t homonormative, or ‘normal’, whatever that means. An Italian writer Leo is facing—or rather, not facing—the death of his lover Thomas, a young German musician. As Leo travels from city to city, recreating the distance that he demanded of Thomas in their relationship while he was alive, memories of Thomas spark chains of recollections, and moments and visions and people appear and merge and vanish as Leo finally approaches the heart of what troubles him, what has always troubled him.
It would be easy to see this as an elegiac novel, presaging the author’s own death not long after it was first published, but it is in fact a careful dissection and remaking of a survivor who must find a conscious reason to live after his lover has gone. Leo rejects heteronormativity but also homonormativity, the dark reflection of straight relationships; however, in so doing Leo almost completely rejects humanity. It is only in realising that Leo’s time with Thomas changed him irrevocably and for the better that Leo finds hope to carry on and to find love again. It bears comparison to Charlie Porter’s Nova Scotia House, with the elements remixed and remade, and both can take their place in the canon of gay literary fiction.
emotional
hopeful
relaxing
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
“Nothing is more trivial than saying: life goes on. But he now feels just that, because he knows, in the world, the people who continue.”
I picked this up for Christopher’s book club, Pride Month edition!
This is an interesting and deeply emotional novel. It doesn’t follow a traditional plot, but it moved quickly. The nonlinear structure can be difficult to follow, and that feels like the point lol; the disorientation of grief and the way memory surfaces whenever he is reminded of Thomas. At first, I didn’t feel very connected to the main character, Leo. He seemed distant. But as the story went on, certain moments really hit me. The most emotional part for me was Leo’s conversation with the general on the plane. Their existentialism made me reflect.
Leo is dealing with a lot. He had asked for separate rooms in his relationship, wanting space and independence. But after his partner dies, he starts to regret creating that distance. The book made me think about how I treat the people around me and whether I hold back more than I should.
The book was very literarily (word?) tapped in. There were many references to literature and the BEATS, specifically calling out Kerouac. The one thing I couldn't stop seeing was the REFERENCES TO PARADISE LOST! I'm bringing that to book club for sure, and this time I am PREPPING because nobody had read Moby Dick before and we were all trolling each other. I dont exactly know how it compares yet... maybe something like Adam after the fall, Leo feels cast out of a kind of personal paradise. Love used to feel safe, but now he’s alone and looking back on what he lost.
The ending, where Leo becomes “available” again, was especially touching. It felt like a quiet kind of resurrection (Paradise Lost) not dramatic, but meaningful. He’s ready to keep living and open himself up again, but without forgetting Thomas. That balance between holding on and moving forward is moving.
Other book club topics - a little fleshed out:
Religion - rejection of organized religion but belief in God, critique of passionless and hypocritical religion, spirituality rooted in sexuality and emotion, love–grief–and desire as sacred experiences, Hosea as a symbol of embodied divine love, silent prayer as vulnerable connection, queer love as a path to the divine, faith grounded in messiness over purity
Paradise Lost - fall from emotional paradise after loss, grief as exile, longing for a love that once felt divine, emotional detachment as spiritual distance, love as transgression, guilt tied to desire, inner life as a battleground between heaven and hell, personal suffering framed as a kind of spiritual fall.
Setting - hotels and airports as symbols of transience and disconnection, separate rooms as emotional distance and self-protection, cities as places of freedom and loneliness, constant travel as a way to escape memory and avoid stillness, bedrooms as sites of intimacy, absence, and longing, physical space mirroring emotional boundaries, movement without destination reflecting grief without closure
Quotes:
“From the outset he knew that Thomas would never be "everything" to him. This is why he called their love "separate rooms". He experienced being with Thomas in the intimate knowledge that they would split up sooner or later. Separation was an essential strength in their relationship, and an essential part of it too, just like the idea of attraction, or growth, or sexual desire. It represented an awareness that if you did not stop the other person from leaving, this made the relationship all the more human.”
“Every year autumn brings him these feelings. Need silence, solitude, memories. You need to sleep. To recapitulate. Need for the interiority. The earth calls him to himself and invites him to gather.”
“Many a time he had caught himself: “I can’t live without God, but I can can live without religion.” He may have abandoned the practice of religion was part of his boyhood, and taught him how to interpret the world, and his, and his, and his feelings, surroundings but he did so because he was not non renegenous his life and his mysticism. He did me because his quest for God was as sexual as well as emotional. At the same time he saw religion beingprad in a weak and mawkish way, in a way that was emasculated and enfeebled, lacking the fertile passion and the violent receptivity of femininity or the exuberance of virility. A religion without sex for people who are afraid of the passions and the power of love. An accommodating, bourgeois religion, that is more often than not hypocritical. At the same time, on the hand other, even in his silent, he was aware prayers of put his entire on the line. This is why he read Hosea. Because in those pages those are was not an an an mental or spiritual vision of the relationship between God and His people. Rather, there was a representation of bodies, a representation of prostitution and wantonness, of the frenzy of separation, ofir and paternal protection. As has always been the case since time immemorial between people who love one another.”
“We need time. To put time between us. To live together, to travel together, so that our thought instinctively recognizes the other; and recognizes it as an automatic presence of custom and affection. We need a long time to accept the brutality of not being alone anymore.”
I picked this up for Christopher’s book club, Pride Month edition!
This is an interesting and deeply emotional novel. It doesn’t follow a traditional plot, but it moved quickly. The nonlinear structure can be difficult to follow, and that feels like the point lol; the disorientation of grief and the way memory surfaces whenever he is reminded of Thomas. At first, I didn’t feel very connected to the main character, Leo. He seemed distant. But as the story went on, certain moments really hit me. The most emotional part for me was Leo’s conversation with the general on the plane. Their existentialism made me reflect.
Leo is dealing with a lot. He had asked for separate rooms in his relationship, wanting space and independence. But after his partner dies, he starts to regret creating that distance. The book made me think about how I treat the people around me and whether I hold back more than I should.
The book was very literarily (word?) tapped in. There were many references to literature and the BEATS, specifically calling out Kerouac. The one thing I couldn't stop seeing was the REFERENCES TO PARADISE LOST! I'm bringing that to book club for sure, and this time I am PREPPING because nobody had read Moby Dick before and we were all trolling each other. I dont exactly know how it compares yet... maybe something like Adam after the fall, Leo feels cast out of a kind of personal paradise. Love used to feel safe, but now he’s alone and looking back on what he lost.
The ending, where Leo becomes “available” again, was especially touching. It felt like a quiet kind of resurrection (Paradise Lost) not dramatic, but meaningful. He’s ready to keep living and open himself up again, but without forgetting Thomas. That balance between holding on and moving forward is moving.
Other book club topics - a little fleshed out:
Religion - rejection of organized religion but belief in God, critique of passionless and hypocritical religion, spirituality rooted in sexuality and emotion, love–grief–and desire as sacred experiences, Hosea as a symbol of embodied divine love, silent prayer as vulnerable connection, queer love as a path to the divine, faith grounded in messiness over purity
Paradise Lost - fall from emotional paradise after loss, grief as exile, longing for a love that once felt divine, emotional detachment as spiritual distance, love as transgression, guilt tied to desire, inner life as a battleground between heaven and hell, personal suffering framed as a kind of spiritual fall.
Setting - hotels and airports as symbols of transience and disconnection, separate rooms as emotional distance and self-protection, cities as places of freedom and loneliness, constant travel as a way to escape memory and avoid stillness, bedrooms as sites of intimacy, absence, and longing, physical space mirroring emotional boundaries, movement without destination reflecting grief without closure
Quotes:
“From the outset he knew that Thomas would never be "everything" to him. This is why he called their love "separate rooms". He experienced being with Thomas in the intimate knowledge that they would split up sooner or later. Separation was an essential strength in their relationship, and an essential part of it too, just like the idea of attraction, or growth, or sexual desire. It represented an awareness that if you did not stop the other person from leaving, this made the relationship all the more human.”
“Every year autumn brings him these feelings. Need silence, solitude, memories. You need to sleep. To recapitulate. Need for the interiority. The earth calls him to himself and invites him to gather.”
“Many a time he had caught himself: “I can’t live without God, but I can can live without religion.” He may have abandoned the practice of religion was part of his boyhood, and taught him how to interpret the world, and his, and his, and his feelings, surroundings but he did so because he was not non renegenous his life and his mysticism. He did me because his quest for God was as sexual as well as emotional. At the same time he saw religion beingprad in a weak and mawkish way, in a way that was emasculated and enfeebled, lacking the fertile passion and the violent receptivity of femininity or the exuberance of virility. A religion without sex for people who are afraid of the passions and the power of love. An accommodating, bourgeois religion, that is more often than not hypocritical. At the same time, on the hand other, even in his silent, he was aware prayers of put his entire on the line. This is why he read Hosea. Because in those pages those are was not an an an mental or spiritual vision of the relationship between God and His people. Rather, there was a representation of bodies, a representation of prostitution and wantonness, of the frenzy of separation, ofir and paternal protection. As has always been the case since time immemorial between people who love one another.”
“We need time. To put time between us. To live together, to travel together, so that our thought instinctively recognizes the other; and recognizes it as an automatic presence of custom and affection. We need a long time to accept the brutality of not being alone anymore.”
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
A tender, reflective novel that borrows from the likes of Burroughs and Baldwin but sometimes struggles under the weight of its own philosophising. By the end however, I felt incredibly moved.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated