A review by moonyreadsbystarlight
Rat Bohemia by Sarah Schulman

emotional reflective sad tense
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

This multi-POV story peers into the lives of a group of friends living in NYC in the peak of the AIDS epidemic. This looks at the wounds of familial abandonment faced by many queers during this time, more general community disconnect in the face of such tremendous grief, and the trappings of nostalgia. These characters are imperfect, loudly messy, hurting, and in all in need of love and going about it in a myriad of wrong ways. The writing is unique and the style shifts with each character in a way that appears quite disconnected at first, but so many things really came into focus for me in the last part.

I have so many thoughts about parts of this. The way it describes disconnect while also showing connections in the characters' experiences, many of which go unacknowledged. It's also interesting reading more books from this era and seeing similarities, not just in content around the AIDS epidemic, community, and family, but the specific emotions that are evoked. The emotion that is distilled with such intensity in Gifts of the Body by Rebecca Brown is unmistakable in here. That feeling is so intense and situated so particularly in that historical moment. And yet, it struck me as I was reading this how uncomfortably familiar some of the disconnect is to the moment we are in as well.
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