Why am I passionate about this?

I was an odd kid—a bookworm worried about why I was different from others. Luckily, my family continuously reminded me that I belonged. Once out of the closet, I was able to appreciate the importance of families, both chosen and unchosen. I became a writer because I was compelled to articulate that importance and maybe help others understand how knowledge, trauma, emotions, and love move between the generations. Queer and family histories have inspired a lot of my journalism and fiction, but especially my new novel, This Is It. I hope it fits alongside these recommendations that explore queer multi-generational stories with wit, intelligence, and wisdom.


I wrote

This Is It

By Matthew Fox,

Book cover of This Is It

What is my book about?

Giovanni’s boyfriend has cancer. Full of shame and unable to witness the suffering of the man he loves, he runs…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of The Sparsholt Affair

Matthew Fox Why did I love this book?

This novel was like gravity; I felt like the author dropped me into the 70-year storyline, and I was powerless to stop myself from falling through its many layers. Each character was so vivid and whole that I cared deeply for each of them.

The connections between the different generations of gay men made me feel like I—a queer author myself—was part of a spanning, meaningful history full of ache, loss, love, and humor. 

By Alan Hollinghurst,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Sparsholt Affair as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

“Call Me By Your Name meets Evelyn Waugh in a gorgeous novel about the generations-long aftershocks of a youthful tryst.” —Esquire

From the winner of the Man Booker Prize, a masterly novel that spans seven transformative decades as it plumbs the complex relationships of a remarkable family.
 
In 1940, David Sparsholt arrives at Oxford to study engineering, though his sights are set on joining the Royal Air Force. Handsome, athletic, charismatic, he is unaware of his powerful effect on others—especially on Evert Dax, the lonely and romantic son of a celebrated novelist who is destined to become a writer himself.…


Book cover of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Matthew Fox Why did I love this book?

This book gripped me from the opening page. It’s everything I usually avoid—comics, suspense, memoir, psychology article—but the way it's calibrated invited me in, then wouldn’t let me leave until I’d lapped up every detail. By setting up her childhood review as a mystery that has to be solved through visual exploration, Alison Bechdel justifies every choice she makes. And they are all correct.

With deadpan humor and wry drawings, Fun Home gave me a thickly layered exploration of how queer elements impacted generations of her family. It never felt navel-gazing, and I found it impossible to imagine the story told any other way than in a graphics.

By Alison Bechdel,

Why should I read it?

15 authors picked Fun Home as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

DISCOVER the BESTSELLING GRAPHIC MEMOIR behind the Olivier Award nominated musical.

'A sapphic graphic treat' The Times

A moving and darkly humorous family tale, pitch-perfectly illustrated with Alison Bechdel's gothic drawings. If you liked Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis you'll love this.

Meet Alison's father, a historic preservation expert and obsessive restorer of the family's Victorian home, a third-generation funeral home director, a high-school English teacher, an icily distant parent, and a closeted homosexual who, as it turns out, is involved with his male students and the family babysitter. When Alison comes out as homosexual herself in late adolescence, the denouement is…


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Book cover of The Map Colorist

The Map Colorist by Rebecca D'Harlingue,

In 1660, Amsterdam is the map-printing capital of the world. Anneke van Brug is a colorist, paid to enhance the black-and-white maps for the growing number of collectors. Her talent brings her to the attention of the great Joan Blaeu, owner of a prestigious publishing house. Not content to simply…

Book cover of Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall

Matthew Fox Why did I love this book?

I love any work that can draw me in by being uncanny while still being emotional. This book is such a work. It's the story of a gay bar that houses a community of cross-generational queer people who become close-knit while the world outside becomes more and more hostile to them.

Though he tells the story with distance and coldness, Neil Bartlett made me feel like I belonged in that bar, in that community. Reading how the characters clutch at meaning and love, how they embrace who they are, and how they support one another had me rooting for them (and for myself) louder every time I turned a page.

By Neil Bartlett,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

It is 3 a.m. in The City, and in a dark corner of The Bar, two lovers collide in the beginnings of a passionate and violent affair.

Boy: nineteen, beautiful, ready for anyone to take him home, and 'O': the Older Man, cynical, unpredictable, and at the mercy of his personal demons. Their romance is orchestrated and observed by the owner of The Bar, Madame, who looks after her boys and ensures that their haven remains inviolate.

At once a joyful celebration of homosexual love and culture, and a devastating evocation of the homophobic climate which stemmed from the 80s…


Book cover of Little Fish

Matthew Fox Why did I love this book?

There is a dark undertow to this book that I didn’t detect in its early pages. Once I was a third of the way through, I was hooked. It’s the story of Wendy, a trans sex worker living through a bracing Winnipeg winter, but it’s also a uniquely queer examination of trauma and abuse offset by the value of family and community.

Her chosen family is produced by circumstance, but it grows its own unique qualities. Meanwhile, her attempts to have a relationship with her father eschew cliché as she reimagines that connection on her own terms. She’s bright and gloomy at once, humorous, curious, and imperfect. Her story is a visceral one; she stuck with me well after I finished it.

By Casey Plett,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Little Fish as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

WINNER, Lambda Literary Award; Firecracker Award for Fiction; $60,000 Amazon Canada First Novel Award

In this extraordinary debut novel by the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning story collection A Safe Girl to Love, Wendy Reimer is a thirty-year-old trans woman who comes across evidence that her late grandfather—a devout Mennonite farmer—might have been transgender himself. At first she dismisses this revelation, having other problems at hand, but as she and her friends struggle to cope with the challenges of their increasingly volatile lives—from alcoholism, to sex work, to suicide—Wendy is drawn to the lost pieces of her grandfather’s life,…


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Book cover of American Daredevil: Comics, Communism, and the Battles of Lev Gleason

American Daredevil by Brett Dakin,

Meet Lev Gleason, a real-life comics superhero! Gleason was a titan among Golden Age comics publishers who fought back against the censorship campaigns and paranoia of the Red Scare. After dropping out of Harvard to fight in World War I in France, Gleason moved to New York City and eventually…

Book cover of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Matthew Fox Why did I love this book?

The sardonic humor is what grabbed me first. But as I gleefully zipped through this story of a lesbian’s coming of age in a repressive Pentecostal church, the author was quietly raising the stakes. She delivers profound observations of how family expectations disproportionately damage queer people. Religion always complicates such stories.

As a gay man who grew up Catholic, I was entranced by how the book deals with faith. When the protagonist starts to understand her own sexual impulses, the power and depth of human emotion also dawn on her. Her religion and family don’t have satisfying answers, and so she creates her own kind of faith. Reading how she does it was incredibly moving for me. 

By Jeanette Winterson,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Key Features:



Study methods
Introduction to the text
Summaries with critical notes
Themes and techniques
Textual analysis of key passages
Author biography
Historical and literary background
Modern and historical critical approaches
Chronology
Glossary of literary terms


Explore my book 😀

This Is It

By Matthew Fox,

Book cover of This Is It

What is my book about?

Giovanni’s boyfriend has cancer. Full of shame and unable to witness the suffering of the man he loves, he runs away from Montreal to New York City, only to find himself on the bank of the East River on the morning of 9/11. The horror of the day forces him to confront his cowardice, his love, and his fear.

He sets out to discover how he became who he is, digging through his past in a series of chapters that move backward in time. Along the way, he uncovers surprises and scandals that reshape everything he thought about himself and his family. The stories are heartbreaking and hilarious, and culminate in an emotional crescendo that will test his character once again.

Book cover of The Sparsholt Affair
Book cover of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
Book cover of Ready to Catch Him Should He Fall

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