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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I’ve read better books. I felt like I spent the entire reading experience standing outside of a window, watching the party inside, or watching someone else flip through a yearbook I wanted to flip through. I never really penetrated the fog around the book.
Incredible, moving story filled with passages that will delight wordsmiths and avid fiction readers. You could say it's a story about stories. There are other reviews that detail the story. I'll just add that this is one to read for the beauties of language and to see how a true master crafts the passage of time, people, and emotions.
I listened to this on Audible as an audiobook, but if I had to do it over, I'd read this one in print. It only diminished the experience a slight bit. Nonetheless it would have been even better to have read this one in print.
I listened to this on Audible as an audiobook, but if I had to do it over, I'd read this one in print. It only diminished the experience a slight bit. Nonetheless it would have been even better to have read this one in print.
reflective
medium-paced
The majority of this book is set in a single room in which two gay men- one young, one dying- talk about, around, and through queer histories. The unlikely pair met years before during a brief overlapping stay in a mental institution. The older, Juan, shares the story of a real-world lesbian researcher, Jan Gay, who helped facilitate a series of interviews with queer people in the 1930s, which later formed the bases of a book titled Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns. Juan has a personal connection with Gay, as well as a copy of Sex Variants, with much of the clinical jargon blacked out to highlight queer people's stories in their own words. Excerpts of these blacked out pages as well as photographs and drawings are included in the text of this book, which is billed as a novel, but clearly contains a strong vein of history. Frankly, I would rather have just read a nonfiction book about Jan Gay's life, or of queer life in the 1930s. The novel elements, formal elements, and history all sat kind of awkwardly side by side for me. I read this in a queer book club, and we were all underwhelmed by it. All of us are aware of the persistent problem of the erasure of queer history; all of us wished the author had taken the theme farther; and all of us had seen more interesting and creative examples of blackout poetry on tumblr or in zines.
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
challenging
informative
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
An unbelievably beautiful book. I am floored. Hard to know what to say. It touches on so much and speaks about queerness and connection and the past and death and the human condition with humour and insight and gentle understanding.
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes