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3.91 AVERAGE
3.91 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-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:
Yes
Everyone needs to read this book NOW!!
Beautiful twists and turns about queerness, storytelling, and how we must carve out our own stories from what has already been written about us
Beautiful twists and turns about queerness, storytelling, and how we must carve out our own stories from what has already been written about us
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
challenging
emotional
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
challenging
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-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:
Complicated
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
I’ve never read a book like this. It mixes nonlinear storytelling with a collection of scientific and historical documents, illustrations and photos. There are many overlapping themes related to LGBTQIA+ identity, how things are remembered and interpreted, found family and living + dying.
I think this book is meant to be experienced and readers should be good with just absorbing the content as opposed to expecting a beginning-middle-end story.
It’s also meant to be experienced and touched—I would not recommend this on an e-reader or audiobook.
challenging
dark
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
A large part of this novel is based around blackouts, the form of using redactions on a document to make poetry, or, at bare minimum new meaning from the original document. This is an absolutely gorgeous novel that blends these blackouts (with the source documents being from a queer researcher whose work was buried) with two gay men, one caretaking the other at the end of his life and receiving this document from him, and how they try to make sense of the one's life in the aftermath of all these absences and redactions. Highly recommended read.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
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
reflective
slow-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
beautifully and uniquely written. such a clear voice
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
I can't put into words what this was or measure its success as a novel or anything, but I can say that I felt seen as a gay person while reading this and I was entranced by the tone, the meandering tangents, and the beautiful writing. I went in thinking this would be about censoring homosexuality in history but found it was more about death, memory, and the importance of non-familial bonds for gay people, woven in a story told through the conversation between two people who share a unique and tender bond.