I’ve been gay for as long as I can remember. I even told my mother, when I was five years old, that I was going to marry Hoss Cartwright (from the TV show Bonanza). But even knowing yourself that well doesn’t make it easy to actually beyourself, so I still had to come out to friends and family over a span of five or six years in my late teens and early twenties. And coming out is never easy, although it feels like a million bucks once you’ve done it. Also, it’s different for everyone, and having books like these I’ve recommended may not make it easier, but they show us that it can be done and that we’re not alone.
It has been less than a year since Susan Benjamin succumbed to cancer and her family has yet to come to terms with her death—and their own secrets. Her daughter Amy, reeling from a divorce, struggles to parent her teenaged son without controlling him as her own mother had done. Her son Adam, thirtysomething and gay, feels untethered in his mother’s absence and drifts through a series of unrewarding jobs and relationships even though he craves love and stability. Her husband Joel, father of Amy and Adam, is fifty-eight and about to come out for the first time as a gay man.
Joel’s coming out is at the center of All About the Benjamins and is, ultimately, what forces the family to confront uncomfortable truths about themselves and each other.
This was the first “real” book I read where the characters were gay and no one was being ridiculed for it. I was fourteen years old when I checked it out from the library and I was astounded by it. It helped me understand that I could just be gay and there was nothing wrong with that. Or me.
'One of his generation's most gifted writers.' New York Times
'An amazingly perceptive novel.' San Francisco Chronicle
'Fascinating... lingers in the mind' New York Times Book Review
Owen and Rose are facing serious challenges to their married life of routine and monotony as New York City grows and changes around them. They spend most Sundays apart; while Rose buries herself in crosswords and newspapers, Owen visits gay porn theaters.
But when they discover they may lose their apartment and their son, prompted by his new relationship, reveals his homosexuality, their lives cannot continue as they were. Owen and Rose are…
Having grown up gay in a small town in the South, this resonated with me as an out gay man in a big city in my twenties, because it got everything about being gay in a small Southern town right: the tone, the emotion, the terror, and most of all, it got how there are more of us in those small Southern towns than we realize at the time, and how leaving for bigger, “better” places isn’t always the answer.
A lonely eighteen-year-old boy growing up in the working-class town of Pryor, Oklahoma, Charlie Hope struggles to cope with his passionately religious mother, the death of his hard-drinking grandfather, his enigmatic late father, and his own confusion over sexual orientation. A first novel.
The ache of first love is the same around the world, and this gem from France does an exquisite job of assuring the reader that if you think you’re the only one who has been lied to in the name of love, you aren’t. It’s set in the 1980s, so it really took me back to the similarities to my own teen struggles. Ringwald’s translation is superb and pitch-perfect.
“I remember the movement of his hips pressing against the pinball machine. This one sentence had me in its grip until the end. Two young men find each other, always fearing that life itself might be the villain standing in their way. A stunning and heart-gripping tale.” —André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name
A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice
The critically acclaimed, internationally beloved novel by Philippe Besson—“this year’s Call Me By Your Name” (Vulture) with raves in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal,NPR, Vanity Fair, Vogue, O, The Oprah…
Another international entry in the tales of angst-ridden gay teen love and longing, this time from Poland, where the stakes are higher—you can actually be arrested for it, maybe even killed. This was a gift from my editor, and I read it in two days while on vacation. It brought back all those feelings of teenage longing mixed with fear from my own experiences.
LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI PRIZE 2021 A Guardian Book of the Year
'The highest talent at work' Sebastian Barry
'Beautiful ... A masterpiece' Attitude
Poland, 1980. Shy, anxious Ludwik has been sent along with the rest of his university class to an agricultural camp. Here he meets Janusz - and together they spend a dreamlike summer falling in love.
But with summer over, the two are sent back to Warsaw. Confronted by the scrutiny, intolerance and corruption of life under the Party, Ludwik and Janusz must decide how they will survive; and in their different choices, find themselves torn apart.…
Another small town Southern tale of “the love which dare not speak its name,” this time between Idgie and Ruth, one a carefree tomboy type and the other a genteel Southern lady, that spans decades. You’ve probably seen the movie, but I recommend the book because it will transport you the way it did me to the kudzu-choked wilds of rural Northern Alabama (I was actually born not far from where the book is set) in the early to mid-twentieth century.
Folksy and fresh, endearing and affecting, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe is a now-classic novel about two women: Evelyn, who’s in the sad slump of middle age, and gray-headed Mrs. Threadgoode, who’s telling her life story. Her tale includes two more women—the irrepressibly daredevilish tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth—who back in the thirties ran a little place in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering good coffee, southern barbecue, and all kinds of love and laughter—even an occasional murder. And as the past unfolds, the present will never be quite the same again.
James Malloy is a ferry captain--or used to be, until he was unceremoniously fired and replaced by a "girl" named Courtney Farris. Now, instead of piloting Brenton Island’s daily lifeline to the glitzy docks of Newport, Rhode Island, James spends his days beached, bitter, and bored.
When he discovers a plan for a private golf course on wilderness sacred to his dying best friend, James is determined to stop such "improvements." But despite Brenton's nickname as "Cooperation Island," he's used to working solo. To keep historic trees and ocean shoreline open to all, he'll have to learn to cooperate with other islanders--including Captain Courtney, who might just morph from irritant to irresistible once James learns a secret that's been kept from him for years.
Loner James Malloy is a ferry captain-or used to be, until he was unceremoniously fired and replaced by a girl named Courtney Farris. Now, instead of piloting Brenton Island's daily lifeline to the glitzy docks of Newport, Rhode Island, James spends his days beached, bitter, and bored.
When he discovers a private golf course staked out across wilderness sacred to his dying best friend, a Narragansett Indian, James is determined to stop such "improvements." But despite Brenton's nickname as "Cooperation Island," he's used to working solo. To keep rocky bluffs, historic trees, and ocean shoreline open to all, he'll have…
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