I’m an avid reader of queer literary fiction not only because I write it but because I’m looking to see my life experience captured on the page. As a gay man, a father of two young boys, and one-half of an interracial married couple, I know the complexity of modern queer living firsthand. In recent years, I’ve been astounded by the breadth of great LGBTQ+ books that examine queerness fully and empathetically. I seek out these books, I read them feverishly, and I become a champion for the best ones. In an era of intense book banning, it’s so important to me to elevate these books and their authors.
I love this book for so many reasons, but chief among them is how Brandon Taylor captures the totality of the queer experience, warts and all.
His characters don’t have to be virtuous or successful simply because they’re marginalized. This book is unconcerned with respectability politics, instead allowing its characters to get messy, to say the wrong things, to make the worst choices. Instead of trauma and tragedy, each protagonist is simply navigating life, and the narratives here are about queer people but not necessarily about them being queer.
There’s space on the page for them to be more than gay, and no matter what they did, I found myself cheering them on as I read.
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY USA TODAY, NPR, VULTURE, MARIE CLAIRE, THE TIMES OF LONDON, GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A group portrait of young adults enmeshed in desire and violence, a hotly charged, deeply satisfying new work of fiction from the author of Booker Prize finalist Real Life
In the series of linked stories at the heart of Filthy Animals, set among young creatives in the American Midwest, a young man treads delicate emotional waters as he navigates a series of sexually…
In this book, Philippe Besson captures the experience of longing in equally sumptuous and excruciating detail.
The prose percolates with sensuality and elegance, yet there’s also a sadness beneath it all. And Besson balances these elements effortlessly.
It’s a slim novel yet an effective one, dripping with richness. When I finished reading, I craved more pages. I wanted to spend more time in this world, in the luxury of Besson’s gorgeous grasp of craft.
“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…
This book smashed everything I thought about memoirs into pieces. Here is a vivid retelling of an abusive relationship that grabbed me not only with its pain but with its form.
From chapter to chapter, Machado hops and skips through genres, utilizing a treasure trove of styles and formats to evoke the best and worst parts of her experience. It’s a masterful experiment that works on every page. That achievement in and of itself makes this book worthwhile.
But also factor in that it’s a queer story. It’s a groundbreaking narrative that never forgets all of the elements that arise when queerness and cruelty collide. This is a high-wire act that Machado pulls off with gusto. It’s easily one of the best books I’ve read in years.
'Ravishingly beautiful' Observer 'Excruciatingly honest and yet vibrantly creative' Irish Times 'Provocative and rich' Economist 'Daring, chilling, and unlike anything else you've ever read' Esquire 'An absolute must-read' Stylist
WINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2021
In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing experience with a charismatic but volatile woman, this is a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse.
Each chapter views the relationship through a different lens, as Machado holds events up to the light and…
The best writers help reimagine what a book can be, and for me, Saeed Jones did just that with this book.
It’s billed as a poetry collection, but page after page, he pushes the boundaries of what a poem can say, how it can fill the page, and the shape it can take. There are free verse poems, prose poems, and poems as essays. There are straightforward experiences and more abstract retellings. There’s grief, identity, Blackness, and queerness woven throughout.
This book is so many wonderful things. In my view, this is a vital document of Black, queer, creative living.
Pierced by grief and charged with history, this new poetry collection from the award-winning author of Prelude to Bruise and How We Fight for Our Lives confronts our everyday apocalypses.
In haunted poems glinting with laughter, Saeed Jones explores the public and private betrayals of life as we know it. With verve, wit, and elegant craft, Jones strips away American artifice in order to reveal the intimate grief of a mourning son and the collective grief bearing down on all of us.
Drawing from memoir, fiction, and persona, Jones confronts the everyday perils of white supremacy with a finely tuned…
Like so many of the books I love, this book isn’t afraid to show a queer couple in distress.
I love this book for its brutality, its interracial couple and the dynamics that entails, for its detour to Japan, for its scrumptious descriptions of food, and its emphasis on food as a means of connection.
It’s beautiful, honest, raw, and contemporary in all the best ways.
'This feels like a vision for the 21st-century novel... It made me happy' Ocean Vuong, author of On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Benson and Mike are two young guys who have been together for a few years - good years - but now they're not sure why they're still a couple. There's the sex, sure, and the meals Mike cooks for Benson, and, well, they love each other. But when Mike finds out his estranged father is dying in Osaka just as his acerbic Japanese mother, Mitsuko, arrives for a visit, Mike picks…
This collection is most concerned with queer identity—characters who are firm in their values get challenged while others struggle to define their beliefs. Across a range of genres (e.g., pulp thriller, romance, speculative, etc.), queer Black men are elevated from "the other" to three-dimensional protagonists with relatable problems. Everyone in this book is seeking clarity about who they are, echoing a struggle that most of us endure at some point in our lives. They don't always succeed, but they emerge from each scuffle forever changed.
I’m a thrill seeker when it comes to reading, and I want to be so immersed in a story that I have to read it in one sitting and then can be completely taken by surprise by a plot twist. It was extremely hard to pick only five titles, so to narrow it down, I 1) made an attempt to pick from a few different sub-genres and, 2) stipulated that Agatha Christie could populate the entire list. All of these titles blend wonderful writing with great twists, and I hope you enjoy them. I did my best to avoid spoilers in the descriptions, although by being on this list, it’s a little bit of a spoiler…
"Dizzying . . . Audiences who wished the TV series The Bear had made room for Russian mobsters are in for a treat" - Kirkus Reviews Starred Review
Sagarine Pfister is a great cook but has been blacklisted by almost every restaurant in Chicago. She gets her chance at Louie's, a below-average restaurant, the only place that will give her a job. Things change when she finds head chef Louie Ferrar dead in the walk-in freezer of his restaurant. But instead of closing the place down, the owner, Russian gang boss Anatoly Morozov, offers not only her Louie's job but…
"Dizzying . . . Audiences who wished the TV series The Bear had made room for Russian mobsters are in for a treat" Kirkus Reviews Starred Review
Sagarine Pfister is a great cook but has been blacklisted by almost every restaurant in Chicago. She gets her chance at Louie's, a below-average restaurant, the only place that will give her a job.
Things change when she finds head chef Louie Ferrar dead in the walk-in freezer of his restaurant. But instead of closing the place down, the owner, Russian gang boss Anatoly Morzov, not only offers her Louie's job, but also…
