FOUR SQUARES: A Novel, fun and games among the elderqueers

FOUR SQUARES: A Novel
BOBBY FINGER
GP Putnam's Sons
$29.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: From the beloved author of The Old Place comes a tender, funny, and fresh novel spanning the 1990s and present day, about a young writer and the community he builds in New York City, and his lonely life 30 years later when an unexpected injury lands him at the local queer senior center.

Artie Anderson wouldn’t call himself lonely, not exactly. He has a beautiful apartment in the West Village, a steady career as a ghostwriter, and he has Halle and Vanessa, who—as the daughter and ex-wife of his former partner—are the closest thing he can call family. But when the women announce a move across the country, on Artie’s 60th birthday no less, Artie realizes that his seemingly full life isn’t quite as full as he imagined. To make matters worse, a surprising injury strips Artie of the independent lifestyle he’s used to and pushes him into the hands of GALS, the local LGBTQ senior center down the street.

Since the death of his ex-boyfriend, Abe decades ago, Artie’s intentionally avoided big crowds and close friends. So, he’s woefully unprepared for the other patrons of GALS, a group of larger-than-life seniors who insist on celebrating each and every day. They refuse to dwell in the past, but Artie, who has never quite recovered from Abe’s death and the loss of his dearest friends, can’t shake the memories of his youth, and of the chances he did, and didn’t, take.

Stretching across the 1990s and the present day, Four Squares is an intimate and profound look at what it means to create community and the lasting impressions even the most fleeting of relationships can leave. With Bobby Finger’s signature warmth, humor, and wit, it is touching reminder that it’s never too late for a second chance at truly living.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Well! Was this ever an exercise in feeling seen! I *am* Artie. I though this would be a bubbly and effervescent flute full of story-champagne. More closely resembled a mug of authentic, bean-based xocolatl as opposed to, say, Swiss Miss.

Artie did what I've done with this life, cocooned himself in search of safety in a world he does not like interacting with all that much. He's been lucky, relate to that, he's got a solid basis for his existence at last, relate to that, and the family he's made takes the place of the non-family of origin, relate to that. All of this is balanced on a knife-edge, of course...all of life is, we just don't think about it until the balance is upset. Way big relate to that! So I vibrate like Annie Dillard's struck bell to all of these story points...what could possibly keep this from being a five-star read?

GALS.

I did not love these big, loud people anywhere near as much as I'd need to for me to rate the book five stars. I think the reason I don't adore them is that I felt unable to buy into them as people. They're perfect *characters, of the sort we see actors create for film or stage roles; they're the kind of characters I'd love to see a film about, in fact. I was expecting to be given a more nuanced and investment-able character in a novel, where there is so much more room to develop them. Artie, as a superb example, is developed to a solidity and dimensionality that demonstrates the author's considerable command of the skills needed. His found-family gals were also briefly but memorably limned...I understood they felt deeply their effect on Artie, and still had reasons for the action they took that hurt him.

So it wasn't lack of skill, then; what happened? I don't know. I also don't think I've seen any other reviewer bring this up as an issue, so permaybehaps it's just me being crotchety...? A very real possibility, not to be discounted or dismissed. I don't know how to test for it, or I would.

None of which is meant to be a warn-off, or even much of a caution. Bobby Finger writes good, solid stories, told in deft, enjoyable prose. I think the book belongs on your TBR if you liked his previous book, or of you liked The Guncle, or Nearlywed, or...does it need saying out loud that the world we live in is so immensely superior to the world we grew up in, fellow oldsters? We're able to choose from a huge variety of ways to feel seen and entertained that were, simply put, impossible to find in our youths.

Which is why the great haters so badly want to gain control of society's levers. If you see yourself as you could be, you'll try to become that; this means you won't be like them, and that is an existential threat.

Good. I've said it often, will say it often in future: Whatever it takes to make the great haters feel threatened and unhappy deserves our support.