MAZELTOV, gay Jewish teen's bar mitzvah mishegas

MAZELTOV
ELI ZUZOVSKY
Henry Holt & Co. (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$13.99 ebook, available now (preorder a paperback for $17.99, delivered 25 August, at that link too)

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In a glorious debut, a boy confronts queer lust, shame, the threat of war, and the plague of family on the day he becomes a man.

At a banquet hall, at the onset of war, Adam Weizmann’s bar mitzvah party turns into a glorious catastrophe. On the cusp of manhood—and the verge of a nervous breakdown—Adam has been bracing for his special day, mired in family neuroses and national dysfunction.

In a chorus of voices, a fractious cast of well-wishers narrates Adam’s coming-of-age in Israel: his newly devout father and the mystic rituals he practiced on his young son; his best friend, Abbie, who points the way to joyful transgression; Khalil, a Palestinian poet, who offers a glimpse of a different way to be; and Adam himself, filled with shame and desire as he faces the brokenness of his world.

At once tender and lustful, a work of scathing satire and piercing insight, Mazeltov is a wholly original vision of a young man’s quest to know his own heart.

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

My Review: Framed as a long flashback from a future not filled in (so as not to give stuff away), this coming-of-age story centered on a religious rite of passage that's recognizing the adolescent mind's shift into high (adult) gear. Unsurprisingly that's also a time many queer kids become aware they're different...and some of those become aware of just exactly how they're different.

Adam's name, shared with the first-ever man in his religion's mythology, is a clever choice. It truly does feel as though one is the very first ever to go through the self-discovery process. Then there's his surname: Weizmann. Only the greatest Zionist of them all was Weizmann. Can't unsee that call-back. It's prestigious in Israel, very much the opposite in my world.

No matter how accepting one's peers and family might be, there is anxiety around recognizing one is Other in the eyes of the world. Most of us don't feel accepted in that awful 13-15 age bracket though, so the queer identity adding complexity to the existing tsurres is seldom welcome.

The Israel setting is going to be an issue to some who read my blog. The ongoing genocide against Palestinians is not foregrounded here, so make your decisions with that information in mind. I myownself was not minded to reject the book outright for not writing the details of a war crime that long predates the PoV character's birth into his personal story. You do you, though.

The multiple PoVs and the technique used to switch among them, along with quiet, unheralded details that are not consistent in the different PoVs, is more likely to cause readers problems than procrustean political tomfoolery. I'm sure some readers put these detail differences down to a lack of novelistic craft. I'm not of that opinion myownself. I think Author Zuzovsky put those variations in the narrative because the characters are going to have those differing recalls, and we as the listeners aren't necessarily going, or even likely to know whose version is factually correct...if any version is.

Adam's unhappily divorced parents are *awful*...and this is judging them from their own PoVs not from dam's adolescent one. Dad snipes at Mom in his remarks for the occasion, Mom can't be arsed to write a speech or her son's rite of passage...ick. Send these two to Gaza to be aid workers so they'll be forced to think of others not just themselves.

It's a sort read at under 200pp. I'll say I was never bored. I'll mention that I was empathetic for this kid's relatable, familiar struggles with naming and taking on his adult identity. I can't not say that I'm squeamish about Israeli literature because the way their government is acting is appalling...and my government's bankrolling it.

It's complicated, like Adam Weizmann's bar mitzvah. It's messy, like Adam Weizmann's bar mitzvah. It needs some room to grow it didn't get, like Adam Weizmann's bar mitzvah.

But it's a debut. More and even better things are to come. Like the aftermath of Adam Weizmann's bar mitzvah.

ASTRONAUT!: A Novel, a metaphor for escape from here-and-now that makes it sound so...frictionless

ASTRONAUT!: A Novel
OANA ARISTIDE
W.W. Norton (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$27.99 hardcover, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending July 28, 2026

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A tense, darkly funny, and politically resonant novel of life under authoritarian rule.

Romania, 1989, the twilight of Ceausescu’s dictatorship: A time when every neighbor, every friend, every family member may be an informant for the regime. When news emerges of a man-eating bear terrorizing the country, two bright lives collide. Constantin, an idealistic police detective—prone to daydreaming and scribbling fairytales in his notebook for his four-year-old son—is tasked with solving the string of mysterious deaths. Lia, a rebellious, inquisitive schoolgirl pining for more color in her life, is unwittingly drawn into an elderly neighbor’s secret plot against the regime. The decisions they make amid the constant gray skies and fear of speaking out will have sweeping consequences—for themselves, for their families, and for their country. Astronaut! is a chilling, suspenseful, and resonant tale by a dynamic new novelist.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: What a claustrophobic read. At eery turn there's a wall, at every corner there's an uneasy dread of what you'll find when you turn it. Even the fun of a kid wanting to give Mama a special birthday gift...disastrous, unmitigatable harm follows.

I was uneasy, I was unnerved, and I was totally hooked. I stopped feeling like I was reading a novel pretty quickly. I winced, chuckled hollowly, got staring prickles, I felt as much a part of the cold greyness of 1989 Romania as a guy in the sunshiney summer of 2026 New York City is likely ever to feel. Lia is in the midst of things she does not realize are seismic shifts. Her sense of self-preservation hasn't taught her what safety is yet. She barrels into danger as she searches for the vibrancy and color of her home country. Honestly I wondered where she might've seen that, the eternal dankness and foggy grey of 1989 Romania was so pervasive.

Then we shift our story attention to detective Constantin, tasked with solving a brutal death, one that lends itself in its mindless ferocity of commission to the spurious explanation of a bear attack.

One that just happens to take place near the hunting party at Dictator Ceaușescu's hunting lodge.

These narratives don't appear to be connected at first. Constantin escapes from the Orwellian "investigation" he's performing to instructions from...well...Securitate (the secret police)? who can be sure, they're very secretive these secret police never doing anything directly that Constantin's seen just by innuendo and "they said"-style rumors. He writes fairy tales for his much-loved son Sandu. The fairy tales are so completely adorable and so trenchant that I want illustrated books of them!

Sandu's story-lessons in how things really are in the world are all so trenchant and targeted that they become our primary means to follow the backgrounded collapse of the Ceaușescu regime. It's a clever and enjoyable way to tell me a larger story behind the story I'm paying attention to. More violent vicious deaths occur that Constantin feels he needs to escape from absorbing, as he turns to creating stories about an astronaut (not the Party-approved term "cosmonaut" please note) to make up in his mind for the nonsensical stories titillating the people about bear attacks with escape from Earth's surly bonds entirely.

Lia's absolute unwillingness to dim down her search for color, for life, in her country and her school leads her into a dangerous association with a real honest to goodness rebel. It's something she puts her whole heart into, this small role in a small eddy of the current of rebellion in 1989 Romania, leading her into a dangerous conflict with a Party official's daughter in her school. She is clearly, obviously the winner of a contest that girl was supposed to win..."he's at the top of the page, the bravest explorer of all. She gives him a light blue helmet and matching spacesuit, and he's smiling through the visor. Why the smile? Because he has just realized that the view from the outer space is like being deep inside a Christmas tree, and he is never afraid. Lia smiles back at him. She names the drawing, flattening the black letters across the surface of the sun, 'Astronaut!'"...whose prize was a face-to-face with Ceaușescu himself. Special classes, intensive training, the usual efforts to make sure no tinge of reality can intrude on the leader's dreamworld.

Lia and her family figure in Constantin's investigation...the part without the bear story in it...and as Lia's meeting with Ceaușescu draws closer, more and more strands of story logic bind them together. We discover Constantin's dark, painful secret; we watch Lia as she draws closer to murderous scum without feeling the appropriate level of fear; we are *frantic* to save whomever we can from the explosion looming.

It's a novel with a satisfying resolution. I will say nothing of the ending.

"We've grown numb. It's like this, kid: in wars, you have to face guns and cannons and soldiers, and the situation is somehow so obviously serious that we mobilise our courage, and our will, and so on. But here, we are supposed to be heroic at our kitchen table, at the factory, on the bus. We are supposed to risk terrible consequences just for saying some perfectly commonsense thing. It never seems worth it."

{Lia}'s pretending to listen, but really she's thinking how lucky she is Comrade Mantea is her friend. He talks complete gibberish but it never feels like he's lying to her. He's nice to her, and he has ideas, not only about grown-up problems but about everyone's problems.

Don't kid yourself: Oana Aristide will show you a mirror, she will shine a harsh raking light on you while she does it.

But she sees everyone's problems in the unflattering shadows.

JEAN, adolescent heartbreak made tougher by class divide

JEAN
MADELEINE DUNNIGAN
W.W. Norton (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$28.99 all editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Seventeen–year–old Jean, a troubled Jewish boy caught in the countercultural swirl of 1970s London, arrives at Compton Manor, a rural alternative boarding school for boys with “problems.” Though he is an outcast among these outcasts, he is befriended by Tom, a much wealthier, more popular classmate, and it seems as if Jean’s world might change.

When things turn romantic, Jean is tipped into a heady, overwhelming infatuation. What before seemed odd now brims with promise—the compulsory farming at school, reading poetry aloud, pagan ritual—and Jean thinks he might even pass his exams. But the differences between Tom and Jean—Tom is tuition–paying, Jean is on a scholarship; Tom social, Jean reclusive—create too wide a chasm to cross.

Set over one hot summer, Jean is a startlingly assured debut about the kinds of love that break us and make us whole.

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

My Review: Choosing not to use conventional punctuation is the root of many novelists' downfall. As a debut novelist, Author Dunnigan set herself this monumental task, on top of several other monumental tasks in telling the story of a young Queer boy coming alive to sex and sexuality in a highly specific milieu. It is an uneven success at them all. The least successful is the sense of place; it's 1976 in London, but if you want to be transported to 1976 London, this is not your best choice of a read.

Jean is a scholarship boy in a behavioral-problem-student boarding school. It's a sketched in place, apart from some unpleasantly graphic dealings with animals dead and alive. Those are extremely particular environments; with a reader's expectations set on feeling immersed in the world they're not successful. I can't say I was ever more than tangentially aware of the environment. It is not described or, better still, evoked. It's stated this is where the action takes place. It works against the sense of place for the characters, teen boys mind you, to wander around in time as the narrative continues. This is how an older person experiences time...this connects to *that* and whatever happened to him anyway but this jerk can't cut in line! No! get back to your place while I find my damn wallet again did I leave it on the counter? oh good there it is.

Teenagers aren't prone to this yet, every moment is real! alive! pulsing with possibility! especially when you're newly In Love with the most gorgeous exciting amazing boy on the planet who has the sexiest...oh my he's hot. What this does give the reader is the World of Jean, all third person, all interior, all solipsistic as a boy usually is.

Punctuation keeps the stream of consciousness from bursting the banks and making a mess. This story is the mess that punctuation and dialogue tags prevent. It's not bad, as in not incompetent in any way. It's just more work than it needs to be to pick the threads of doomed adolescent heartbreak out of the verbs. As a superannuated version of Jean, I can say Author Dunnigan's chosen a strangely indirect way to deal with adolescent male libido by distancing the reader from it in this stream of consciousness. It's almost sexless sexuality presented in the flashes of memory and the internal asides and other tangential evocations.The way she's chosen to present him to us felt distancing to me because he is not experiencing the moment. He's a teen boy in love, he would be thinking A LOT about sex in direct and physical terms, since he isn't a virgin any more.

I'm still excited by the read. I liked the experience of Jean's rootlessness, his inability to see anything not directly pointed out to him. I think a big part of my desire to keep reading was rooted in my sense that, for all the author's odd choices and off framing that didn't work for me, I got to see the world from the haze of Wrongness that Jean has always felt...that so many like him, limited, ungainly, graceless, feel. It was a big mental leap to be in Jean's skin. He does not think ahead, he is not aware of others as real, he can't fully grasp his choices are in fact his own. Jean does not make choices. Things happen to Jean. The constant tobacco use and the uncontrolled drug use were deeply familiar, very much part of adolescence in the era. In the end, Jean is a boy whose manhood we don't get to see but which is not likely to be much better than his adolescence of betrayals has been.

My recommendation sounds grudging. It really isn't. This is a debut novel that takes a big swing. It is more successful than not; it's only that the presentation isn't going to entice readers who aren't already fans of stream-of-consciousness storytelling. It felt fine to me, and might to you if you're willing to make room for a man being born and broken at the same time.

THE LAKE'S WATER IS NEVER SWEET, apt title for people who can't catch a break

THE LAKE'S WATER IS NEVER SWEET
GIULIA CAMINITO (tr. Hope Campbell Gustafson)
Spiegel & Grau (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$29.00 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In her English-language debut, award-winning Italian novelist Giulia Caminito follows a teenage girl as her family transitions from Rome’s impoverished outskirts to a fraught new beginning in a tranquil lakeside town, capturing the disillusionment, loneliness, and rage that defined a generation.

In the 1990s, Gaia’s family moves from the neglected peripheries of Rome to an idyllic lakeside town twenty miles away, in search of a new life that will lift them out of poverty. Each of them bears their own scars: Gaia’s strong-willed mother is fiercely determined to secure a better future for her children at any cost; her father, a once proud man, now suffers in bitter silence after a devastating accident; her anarchist older brother rebels against the political apathy he sees at home; and her young twin brothers wordlessly bear witness to a family in decay.

When Gaia meets two local girls, Agata and Carlotta, the trio builds a fragile friendship throughout their adolescence based as much on their insecurities and jealousies as it is on their mutual affection. Gaia’s encounters with callous boys and contemptuous teachers convince her that she might always be an outsider—excluded from a privileged life and perhaps even beyond the possibility of happiness. Faced with bullying and betrayals among her peers and immense pressure from her mother to excel, Gaia turns inward and her world becomes increasingly insular. Then tragedy strikes her friend group. As more friends slip away and her family fractures, Gaia vows to make the world pay for all the things it has denied her.

Winner of the Campiello Prize, The Lake’s Water Is Never Sweet is an unflinching portrait of a generation, striving to make a place for themselves in a world markedly different from the one their parents promised them. With psychological acuity and stylish prose, Caminito takes us into the volatile, searching mind of a young woman torn between her desire to connect with others and her drive for self-preservation. In a novel that has been acclaimed by readers around the world, Caminito shows how tenderness and fragility often lie just beneath the surface of simmering fury.

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

My Review: Gaia narrates this story to us, in all her adolescent angst, pain, confusion, bewilderment...all the usual things an adolescent in the middle of the utterly mystifying process of finding out who she is, what she wants, how she's going to set about getting it, feels.

That does not sound like a book I'd like very much. And yet you see those four stars up there. Where'd they come from?

From a scaffolding that wasn't safe. From a stable that showed Gaia she didn't have the power to heal the wounds betrayal leaves. From a bag of rotting lemons, from a carnival shooting game, from texts that can't be answered...from, in other words, life as it is lived.

Watching in real-time someone coming of age is *maddening* because you're helpless. Reading a novel about a young woman becoming herself is both faster and friendlier on the patience. Gaia's got a hard row to hoe in this life, her entire family's very badly broken in real, honest ways. That leaves her to do what she can with what she's got, and that is never enough. Nothing is ever enough when you're working on, working out, yourself. You paste together the bits you can find, then paper over the holes and cracks and voids. It is how humans have always done it, don't be fooled by fools telling you it used to be easier, it was better when..."when" is the slipperiest word in English. "When" never comes, never came, isn't coming, got lost. "When" immigrated from Old Frisia, from Proto-Indo-Europe whatever wherever whenever that happened. Who needs "when" because we have "now."

And "now" is Gaia's native land.

It was clear to me the story here was not purely foundationally fiction. The author says so in her last word on the subject. She's Gaia; other girls from her past were Iris and Agata. It doesn't help, particularly, to know that but it does make me trust the author more. She's honest; she wrote a novel about realness by using reality, and one person's reality is never, ever enough...see above...for a whole novel. It's too much and never enough, like Mary Trump says. We're not enough for fiction; we're too much for Life. It's a puzzlement, remember Yul Brynner talking those lines on pitch? And no king like The King and I ever spoke greater sooth. Imagine not feeling puzzled! Imagine feeling so sure of yourself that you, a teen anarchist boy, run your family! Imagine how *little* you feel in the face of Life, and you power through anyway, and rotten-souled bastards take your life, your living, your family's home.

Imagine.

And yet here we are. Absolutely in the same place we were, only without instead of with.

Read The Lake's Water Is Never Sweet by Giulia Caminito as translated by Hope Campbell Gustafson and imagine.

THE SLIP, debut novel that feels very assured and is very complex and involving

THE SLIP
LUCAS SCHAEFER
Simon & Schuster (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

2025 National Book Critics Circle Award/The John Leonard Prize finalist for debut work!

One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2025!

A New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2025 selection

One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2025!

Rating: 4.5* of five

WINNER OF THE 2025 KIRKUS PRIZE for Fiction!

The Publisher Says: For readers of Jonathan Franzen and Nathan Hill comes a haymaker of an American novel about a missing teenage boy, cases of fluid and mistaken identity, and the transformative power of boxing.

Austin, It’s the summer of 1998, and there’s a new face on the scene at Terry Tucker’s Boxing Gym. Sixteen-year-old Nathaniel Rothstein has never felt comfortable in his own skin, but under the tutelage of a swaggering, Haitian-born ex-fighter named David Dalice, he begins to come into his own. Even the boy’s slightly-stoned uncle, Bob Alexander, who is supposed to be watching him for the summer, notices the change. Nathaniel is happier, more confident—tanner, even. Then one night he vanishes, leaving little trace behind.

Across the city, Charles Rex, now going simply by “X,” has been undergoing a teenage transformation of his own, trolling the phone sex hotline that his mother works, seeking an outlet for everything that feels wrong about his body, looking for intimacy and acceptance in a culture that denies him both. As a surprising and unlikely romance blooms, X feels, for a moment, like he might have found the safety he’s been searching for. But it's never that simple.

More than a decade later, Nathaniel’s uncle Bob receives a shocking tip, propelling him to open his own investigation into his nephew’s disappearance. The resulting search involves gymgoers past and present, including a down-on-his-luck twin and his opportunistic brother; a rookie cop determined to prove herself; and Alexis Cepeda, a promising lightweight, who crossed the US-Mexico border when he was only fourteen, carrying with him a license bearing the wrong name and face.

Bobbing and weaving across the ever-shifting canvas of a changing country, The Slip is an audacious, daring look at sex and race in America that builds to an unforgettable collision in the center of the ring.

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

My Review: Does the publisher's synopsis sound like A Lot? That's down to the fact that it is. Don't fret, though, there's room for it all in close on five hundred pages. It's told in multiple layers of PoV, it's told across points in time, and it's told at an unfolding pace, not the heady adrenaline rush of a boxing match. (Y'all remember from May's Pearls & Burgoines how I feel about boxing.)

The truth is that "Boxing" isn't quite the same as what I see in the fights here. It's the reasons and techniques and substance of boxing, not the performative violence I'm so repelled by, that are on display. The way young Nathaniel is drawn in to the world of the gym, discovers himself, and makes such a stir as he and David, his Haitian boxing mentor, discover his natural abilities is what it means to be young and find your gift.

Then Nathaniel, all of sixteen, disappears.

To say this was upsetting to me is to understate its impact within the story. It is that dramatic pivot point that many books either lack, or squander the impact of. That almost happens here, which is why the fifth star is partial. There are a welter of viewpoints, some more impactful than others...what's the self-defense hen-class all about anyway?...but the fact is everything does tie in by the end. I think comparisons to Jonathan Franzen are appropriate; I'd say they're not quite all there is, though. Franzen's undeniable way of summing a character up in a phrase is here, but so is John Kennedy Toole's bitter, snarky, unkind edge. I'll say that I encountered these thoughts as I was shifted and rearranged in time, therefore was more than usually alert for new ways of seeing the characters. This is a read that repays your attention and will escape you if you just scan the pages looking for distraction from the world. Attentively read it will be a strong accent on many of the issues we face in the world today.

The gay subject matter in the book is not foregrounded, but foundational all the same. It is not accidental that absolutely nothing in the author's biography is in any way indicative of his own sexuality. He wrote this story well and treated the gay characters well; does that mean anything except he's a good observer, and a sensitive storyteller? ¿Quién sabe? And does it really matter? I'm of the opinion it does not.

The ultimate payoff of the story is down to the much-delayed and very tellingly told investigation into Nathaniel's disappearance that his uncle comes to launch, acting on a strange tip. It becomes a very different story, honestly, as Uncle Bob Alexander does not seem to get too far yet the police still seem to want to stand in the way...but the idea doesn't seem to be to stop him discovering something so much as preventing him from ruining their image.

Quite a lot happens in the last third of the book that tucks odd strands of character development into proper place in ways I wasn't expecting. The trans representation is excellent, sensitive, and as fearlessly written as the white author's Black characters are. In fact, if I were to pick one word to sum up the affect of this debut author's novel, "gonzo" would be my choice: He sees no obstacles in his difficult choices, only climbable walls.

It is hard to spend almost five hundred pages learning about these folks then leave them behind. A better recommendation to get yourself a copy is hard to imagine.

OYE, intense debut sapphic novel of adolescence in an immigrant family under HUGE life-stresses

OYE
MELISSA MOGOLLON
The Hogarth Press
$29.00 hardcover, available now

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 37TH Lambda Literary Awards for Lesbian Fiction.

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A coming-of-age comedy. A telenovela-worthy drama. A moving family saga. All in a phone call you won’t want to hang up on…

A young woman reckons with her rowdy, unpredictable family and the revelation of their long-buried history in this wildly inventive debut.

“Yes, hi, Mari. It’s me. I’m over my tantrum and finally calling you back. But you have to promise that you won’t say anything to Mom or Abue about this, okay? They’ll set the house on fire if they find out…”

Luciana is the baby of her large Colombian American family. And despite usually being relegated to the sidelines, she now finds herself the voice of reason in the middle of their unexpected crisis. Her older sister, Mari, is away at college and reduced to a mere listening ear on the other end of their many phone calls, so when South Florida residents are ordered to evacuate before a hurricane, it’s up to Luciana to deal with her eccentric grandmother, Abue, who’s refusing to leave. But the storm isn’t the only danger. Abue, normally glamorous and full of life, is given a crushing medical diagnosis. While she’d prefer to ignore it and focus on upholding her reputation and her looks instead, the news sets Abue on her own personal journey, with Luciana reluctantly along for the ride.

When Abue moves into Luciana’s bedroom, their complicated bond only intensifies. Luciana would rather be skating or sneaking out to meet girls, but Abue’s wild demands and unpredictable antics are a welcome distraction from Luciana’s misguided mother, absent sister, and uncertain future. Forced to step into the role of caretaker, translator, and keeper of the devastating secrets that Abue begins to share, Luciana suddenly finds herself center stage, facing down adulthood—and rising to the occasion.

As Luciana chronicles the events of her upended senior year over the phone, Oye feels like the most entertaining conversation you’ve ever eavesdropped a rollicking, heartfelt, and utterly unique novel by an author as original as she is insightful.

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

My Review: A funny, modern updating of the epistolary novel, with all its strengths and weaknesses intact. The biggest strength for me was Luciana's voice: Raw, unregulated, intensely immersed in a very difficult moment. I have heard criticism from readers about the "foul language" Luciana uses, to all of whom I say, "go read a religious tract if all you want is sweet, uplifting pablum." Luciana's in a car fleeing a bloody hurricane! She's trying to reach her sister! She's left her Abue (Grandma for the monoglots) behind...at the old lady's insistence!

If anyone has a reason to use Language, it's this girl; plus she's talking to her sister! Not an Authority figure. Which brings me to, who says you, the reader, get to be an authority entitled to pass judgment, anyway?

And here I am, passing judgment....

Well, hypocrisy thy name is me, I guess. I disagree with those pursey-lipped objections because I don't agree with them, anywhere, period. To me, this is a feature not a bug: Immediacy and authenticity enhancing the usual epistolary read's sense of becoming privy to another person's intimate communications to someone not you. That style is emotionally more intense, more immediate, than third-person or *shudder* the Satanic Second person narration. That becomes ever more relevant as the hurricane threat is survived and the aftermath begins.

What the story does is deeply unfamiliar and absolutely terrifying to me. It chronicles the emotional reality of a child's bearing the burdens of adulthood, of responsibility for interpreting...on every level that word has in English...the world for the nominal adults around her. I can think of nothing more frightening to read about than that imposition on someone who is also coming to terms with her sapphic love needs. The latter would be enough to stress a kid out, and it certainly has, but add on top the cultural and language interpretation demands...!

This is, to me at least, the very most unnerving of isolations. Luciana is left, by the sister she's leaving these voicemails for, to be in charge of some deeply stressful navigations of her world that I feel sad she has to be burdened with, things that by all rights a teenager should not have to be in charge of. That's conveyed very well by the updated use of the epistolary format.

There are the usual limitations, of course. The fact that this is not a conversation, a la that ur-telephone novel Nicholson Baker's Vox, means that the story is solely the one Luciana sees and feels. We get her character, but are asked to fill in the spaces where the other characters...reduced to names here...need to be. That is inherent in the format, so it does nothing wrong, just leaves more work for the reader. I found that a bit off-putting as time went by; why is Luciana pouring her heart out to Mari anyway, I kept wondering, when there's nothing coming back...and the realization of Luciana's actual, heart-rending isolation came crashing in again.

As an evocation of the absolute intensity of adolescent emotions, passions, and fears, it works. As a novel, it can feel overly dramatic and one-note. That is a risk that the epistolary format carries within itself. I liked the read, but was too overstimulated to love it, as I could never be anywhere but in medias res.

SEARCHING FOR VAN GOGH, coming-of-age novel set in 1960s Michigan

SEARCHING FOR VAN GOGH
DONALD LYSTRA
Omena Hills Press
$5.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Set in Michigan during the tumultuous closing weeks of 1963, "Searching for Van Gogh" is a heart-wrenching story of two young souls bravely navigating life's challenges.

A young woman is inspired by a cinematic heroine to find meaning in a world that has cast her aside.

A teenage math and science prodigy turns to art as he struggles with the pain of losing his beloved elder brother.

Their unlikely friendship is a beacon of hope, reminding us that in tough times the best defense is the help we can give to one another.

Reminiscent of timeless classics like Ordinary People and To Kill a Mockingbird, this story celebrates the power of friendship and understanding in an often unforgiving world.

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

My Review: Do you need a break from the nastiness and unapologetic hatemongering of the world outside your door? Do you want to take a trip back to a world still slowly moving into full awareness of how cruel it has become?

Here's you a read.

Two people carrying a lot of sadness find each other at very vulnerable moments in each one's life. Their entire worlds have narrowed into coping with loss and loneliness. Then...they meet, they connect, and they tentatively learn to communicate.

What on Earth is happening to this old man, I can hear you wondering. This kind of story never appeals to him! Quite true, it is not my native land, well-trodden paths to and fro everywhere one looks in my catalog of reads. I was pleased to read something with the personal stakes of this story...grief, loss, coming to terms with the way the world works, how families fail each other at crucial times. The prose is direct and unpretentious, the voices of the characters distinct, and that plus the storyline and setting gave me what I craved most: Investment and involvement with neither anger nor outrage, just the pleasant sense that this time the world handed these two hurting souls the balm instead of the liniment.

I needed an emotionally real story, uncomplicatedly told, with people in believable emotional pain that was not going to cause Disaster. I needed that story to end believably well without absurd, over-the-top machinations, like it does in the happier passages of Real Life. And I got what I needed. I am glad I read this direct, involving, kind story.

So, kindness seekers, come to Donald Lystra's doorstep and be fed.

YOUNG MUNGO, second three-hankie weepie novel from Douglas Stuart

YOUNG MUNGO
DOUGLAS STUART
Grove Press
$27.00 hardcover, available now

One of NPR's Best Books of 2022!

One of Time Magazine's 100 Must-Read Books of 2022

LISTEN TO THE AUTHOR DISCUSS HIS BOOK!

LONGLISTED for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction!


Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A story of queer love and working-class families, Young Mungo is the brilliant second novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain.

Douglas Stuart's first novel Shuggie Bain, winner of the 2020 Booker Prize, is one of the most successful literary debuts of the century so far. Published or forthcoming in forty territories, it has sold more than one million copies worldwide. Now Stuart returns with Young Mungo, his extraordinary second novel. Both a page-turner and literary tour de force, it is a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a deeply moving and highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men.

Growing up in a housing estate in Glasgow, Mungo and James are born under different stars—Mungo a Protestant and James a Catholic—and they should be sworn enemies if they're to be seen as men at all. Yet against all odds, they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they fall in love, they dream of finding somewhere they belong, while Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him, especially from his big brother Hamish, a local gang leader with a brutal reputation to uphold. And when several months later Mungo's mother sends him on a fishing trip to a loch in Western Scotland with two strange men whose drunken banter belies murky pasts, he will need to summon all his inner strength and courage to try to get back to a place of safety, a place where he and James might still have a future.

Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in the literary world, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the divisions of sectarianism, the violence faced by many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.

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

My Review: I want to address something that's been bothering me a lot to start off this review:

There. I've said it. I stand by it. Adjust your seatbelts, laddies and gentlewomen, and listen up.

Mungo's a teenager with a truly evil, selfish alcoholic mother, a violent, should-be-imprisoned brother, and a sweet but misguided, loving but naïve sister, and a serious tic gifted to him by his unaddressed, undiagnosed neurodivergence. His life isn't one tiny bit of fun, and unlike Shuggie in Author Stuart's first book, he doesn't have a love object in his entire life. He loves his sister and she loves him, but that's a little like the lame helping the halt. Shuggie was entirely absorbed in loving his mother, but Mungo seldom sees his and when he does, it's usually better for him not to spend much time in her toxic terrible black hole of a presence. Being a neurodivergent person, Mungo fixates on his too-young, too-broken mother for whatever guideposts she can offer; she sucks the whole of his lovingkindness down like her genuine love, fortified wine, and gives none back. So he knows, at least seems to know, she isn't a model he can follow. His sister does the best she can to fill the kindness void, but she's barely older than Mungo by the calendar. She's gotten out of a bad jam, and come to know she can't live in this world...meaning she has to leave Mungo behind. Hamish? All Hamish does, all he knows, is rage and violence. There will be nothing else left in Mungo's life...no other emotional reality.

This, then, isn't Shuggie Redux. Stop pretending it is. Yes, it's set in deindustrializing Glasgow. Yes, it takes place in the working class parts of that world. Alcoholic parent, abusive sibling, all there...but the meat of this story is Mungo, and therefore this story could not be less like the family that slips away from Shuggie, that he just...loses...no fault of his own. The one good thing, as he tells himself (and with which I agree) is that he has is the love he bears for and gets from the Catholic boy who lives near him: James. James, son of a cancer-taken mother, an oil-rig worker father, and in love with Mungo. Who, need I mention, loves James right back. They explore their teenaged awkward bodies, they try to figure out the HUGE new emotions, and they face up to the impossibility of being openly gay in their world. Hamish? He'll kill Mungo; James's father's already had a go at killing him for it. James, older by almost a year, is the one who has to bear the public brunt of their inevitable discovery...Mungo just can't.

Not to say Mungo's not hapless and helpless. He's simply clueless, he lacks a kind of inner compass that warns a person away from impulsive action. In the end, it causes a world of trouble for him, and all of it is his mother's fault. She wants to be alone, to get her funtimes with a new man, so off she packs Mungo (freshly beaten by Hamish for the James-loving faggot that he is) off with...strangers, basically. And that goes epically badly for Mungo. He can think of nothing, no way out of his terrible situation. He's got nothing except what he's seen, what's surrounded him his whole life when Life, the great existential crisis that is Life, crashes down on him. That it is a test is clear; how he responds to the test isn't obviously the way he would have even a day before it came upon him. Mungo makes his whole life anew when he absolutely can do nothing except react, respond to the great crisis.

It is harsh, ugly, and frightening, and it comes from events so hideous that I was sure I would lose my rag and start screaming incoherently at the Kindle. And it was, in this reader's angry, bitter judgment, the only and the best way he could have behaved. It was a boy, cooked in a bath of rage, becoming the only man that bath dissolved the fatty, weakening childness off of him to be.

There is a scene at the very end of the book, a moment, a thing we're not expecting. It is, of course, Author Stuart's last word. He wrote this book, this harsh and unyielding and rageful story, the way he wrote Shuggie Bain: without mercy. It was the perfect ending. And this was the best way he could possibly have followed that book up: darkness has shadows, too.

THE BLACK FLAMINGO, YA coming-of-age novel in verse that I read. For real.

THE BLACK FLAMINGO
DEAN ATTA
Balzer & Bray (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$10.49 Kindle edition

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Stonewall Book Award Winner * A Time Magazine Best YA Book Of All Time

A fierce coming-of-age verse novel about identity and the power of drag, from acclaimed poet and performer Dean Atta. Perfect for fans of Elizabeth Acevedo, Jason Reynolds, and Kacen Callender.

Michael is a mixed-race gay teen growing up in London. All his life, he’s navigated what it means to be Greek-Cypriot and Jamaican—but never quite feeling Greek or Black enough.

As he gets older, Michael’s coming out is only the start of learning who he is and where he fits in. When he discovers the Drag Society, he finally finds where he belongs—and the Black Flamingo is born.

Told with raw honesty, insight, and lyricism, this debut explores the layers of identity that make us who we are—and allow us to shine.

I USED MY YULE GIFTCARD TO BUY THIS ON SALE. LOVE YOU, SWEETIENUBBINS. (But seriously, no more.)

My Review: Y’all. Get down on your poetry-lovin’ knees and say “Hallelujah” cuz your anti-Homeric un-Shelleyed non-Ginsbergly poetry Grinch just read a five zillion page YA coming-of-age book of it.

In full. No skippity-hoppity-next-please.

I shall accept your plaudits in the comments below. Books suffice as tribute. Please consult my Elfster list for recommendations.

What I didn’t do was much enjoy myself. The story’s fine, read it a million times, but that’s hardly the point with a coming-of-age tale in the hands of one from the vaults, as Frank N. Furter once said. I’m perfectly happy, then, as I am not the one being addressed, to step into observer mode and make my judgments on what the Author’s story sets out to do without the distracting sense of seeing myself and my struggles in his words.

First, of course, we have that perennial whine, “why poetry? just come out and say it!” For me to read the whole book, there needs to be something I can hang my hat on, some protuberant part that absolutely can not be expressed without Author Atta committing poetry before my affronted eyes. (This is also how I feel about comic books…I mean graphic novels!...as regular readers have heard and heard and heard me say.)

The Black Flamingo, in all its tremulous adolescent fumbling for Identity in a world that strongly prefers safe, restrictive labels, goes over that bar with room to spare. Lovely Mikey and his first…the bloke he loses his virginity and his innocence to…that simply could not have worked in prose. It would’ve made the entire exercise into a late 1950s kitchen-sink drama, something only slightly more authentic than EastEnders. The way Michael comes out to his mother…the way his grandfather and he communicate with the television story about the black flamingo…all of those moments are not adequately renderable in simple (or even fancy and complicated) prose.

Of course the story ends on a high note. It has to; those are the coming-of-age/YA rules for gay fiction nowadays. And, may I just say from my standpoint as someone who never had anything remotely like this book to read as a teenager, y’all GO! Write it, read it, talk about it, make it spread far and make it spread wide, get these words in front of as many who might maybe kinda sorta almost be confused or wondering or just plain curious.

This is the world the men who died of AIDS while I held their hands wanted to bring to life. I’m so far beyond happy that I’ve lived to see it, to know it flourishes, and to say “thank all those useless gods it’s here at last.” Now…you lot need to make sure it lasts. Nothing is free, if you’re not out there pushing and shouting and making noise then it’s all under the radar and the threats to women’s and Black peoples’ and all the other folks They don’t like will be the small end of the wedge.

Your turn will come.

If you can’t do anything publicly, do it privately…make calls to legislators (don’t know what to say? https://5calls.org/ has you covered) to let them know you’re a constituent, you pay attention to them and their votes, and you will vote them out. If you live in a scary place, send money through the big organizations like ActBlue. They don’t give anyone anything personal about you, just your money to people who maybe aren’t exactly perfect but they are a lot better than Them.

And that’s it. That’s the review, that’s the speech, that is all I know how to say to break someone, anyone, free from paralysis and inaction.

TWENTY-FIVE TO LIFE, a title with more layers than an onion and just as apt to make you cry

TWENTY-FIVE TO LIFE
R.W.W. GREENE
Angry Robot (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$6.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

SUPER ULTRA BARGAIN ALERT You can get the sale-priced Kindle edition here for 99¢!!

The Publisher Says: Life goes on for the billions left behind after the humanity-saving colony mission to Proxima Centauri leaves Earth orbit ... but what's the point?

Julie Riley is two years too young to get out from under her mother's thumb, and what does it matter? She's over-educated, under-employed, and kept mostly numb by her pharma emplant. Her best friend, who she's mostly been interacting with via virtual reality for the past decade, is part of the colony mission to Proxima Centauri. Plus, the world is coming to an end. So, there's that.

When Julie's mother decides it's time to let go of the family home in a failing suburb and move to the city to be closer to work and her new beau, Julie decides to take matters into her own hands. She runs, illegally, hoping to find and hide with the Volksgeist, a loose-knit culture of tramps, hoboes, senior citizens, artists, and never-do-wells who have elected to ride out the end of the world in their campers and converted vans, constantly on the move over the back roads of America.

AUTHOR GREENE SENT ME A DRC OF THIS TITLE AT MY REQUEST. THANK YOU.

My Review: You know that itchy little something that lives in the back of your brain? The one that says "...but...wait...what was...?" in a still, small voice but never quite speaks what it is you've forgotten? That's what happened to me with this book. I knew I wanted it...go look at my review for The Light Years...but forgot it was coming out this month. Completely. Until about a week ago.

Way too late to hit up the publisher, in other words. Fuck!

But given that Rob and I follow each other on Twitter, I used my privileged access (snort!) and DMed him to beg for a DRC in my preferred format. Next thing I knew it was in my inbox and I was off to the races. A week, though, isn't a lot of time to read something for a review. Contrary to the openly expressed opinion of a Famous SF Writer who, on Facebook, called my reviews "mediocre," I do expend a goodly amount of effort to engage with what it is I think the writer is trying to do, and if they've succeeded at it, in my opinion. Are there longueurs of style, are there errors of fact, and how exactly did I end up feeling about the story I was being told?

The news is good, readers. Author Greene does it again. He's made a post-apocalyptic future of Left-Behinders not only readable but fun.

Julie, twenty-three, is on her way into an underage person's rave-type party as we meet her. Mother signed off on her attendance..."just don't let anyone film you!"...and here she is, ready to have all the pharma-fun she can! The state wants people happy, so there are implants that go in as soon as possible; they give out SSRIs like they're nothing because, well, that's what the people Left Behind on Earth can expect: Nothing. The planet's given itself a terrible fever to get rid of the infection of Humanity, and it's working. Hence the Best and Brightest going to the Stars.

Julie, goddesses please bless her, wants...something. It's not going to happen if she stays where she is, so she makes the changes necessary (hello, drug withdrawal aka "brain zaps"!) and joins the Volksgeist. They're the few remaining souls who'd rather experience life instead of simply existing through it. Julie joins their caravan of fools (das NarrenVan?) and begins Life with Ranger, an older woman who takes her in and renames her "Runner." (It really fits.) And the novel goes On the Road!

The way things unfold is partly a commentary on the difficulty of detoxing from the astonishingly complex cocktail of brain-altering stuff we routinely ingest. This means Runner has periodic, what to call them, lapses? lacunae? in her sense of time and in the narrative of the story. Since that means some sorts of things don't get described (a party is simply not dealt with, only its aftermath, for example), it can feel a bit frustrating. I wanted to, like Runner herself, experience it all...but what happens in the telling is that I was given the sense of experiencing it as Runner did herself...a subtle, but bold, decision on Author Greene's part. I think it was successful in reinforcing my sense of Runner's reality, her actual experience, though I might've chosen a different course given the chance.

What do road novels do best? They give you a broad spectrum of experiences...and that's here, as well. The community of the Volksgeist is one amorphous, boundary-permeable entity. The places it rests are both changed by the experience of the group being there and the group is changed by additions and deletions of personal choices to remain or join. It makes the entire novel feel as though the goal is Canterbury, and the Wife of Bath will be here momentarily. While I'm medievalizing, since we've already got the Ship of Fools and the Pilgrim's Tale, let me point out that this is very much a morality play as well. Ranger and Runner, the Odd Couple in a way, are experiencing in unmediated form the consequences of my generation's criminal neglect of the warning signs of catastrophe to come. There's not a single thing that happens to the Volksgeist that isn't perfectly possible to believe is happening now, or to see how it will in the term left to me of my own life.

It doesn't look good. It doesn't make my generation look good. And it makes for one helluva good story.

On sale the 24th, tomorrow from when I'm writing this; preorder it now. You WILL want to have it ASAP.

BLACKFISH CITY & EXIT PLANS FOR TEENAGE FREAKS, a pair of top-quality SFF/cli fi reads

EXIT PLANS FOR TEENAGE FREAKS
'NATHAN BURGOINE
Bold Strokes Books
$7.99 ebook editions, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Being the kid abducted by old Ms. Easton when he was four permanently set Cole's status to freak. At seventeen, his exit plan is simple: make it through the last few weeks of high school with his grades up and his head down.

When he pushes through the front door of the school and finds himself eighty kilometers away holding the door of a museum he was just thinking about, Cole faces facts: he's either more deluded than old Ms. Easton, or he just teleported.

Now every door is an accident waiting to happen―especially when Cole thinks about Malik, who, it turns out, has a glass door on his shower. When he starts seeing the same creepy people over his shoulder, no matter how far he's gone, crushes become the least of his worries. They want him to stop, and they'll go to any length to make it happen.

Cole is running out of luck, excuses, and places to hide.

Time for a new exit plan.

I RECEIVED A DRC OF THIS TITLE FROM BOLD STROKES BOOKS VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Yeah, that worked. I was transported and eager to stay there.

Malik King knew my name? I let the little thrill in my chest play out a couple of seconds before I squashed it.

You remember that moment, the one where your crush sees you for the first time, you exist as more than a label for a thing that takes up space. Malik just experienced it. Cole just experienced the validation of his entire miserable childhood existence as the freak who got snatched by an old cat lady...the hawt guy he's lusted after Noticed Him. What's so adorable is that, being told from Cole's PoV, adults see the way Malik's maneuvering himself into Cole's orbit and really, really, really hoping his butthead jock friends don't get him declined like a noun in Latin class.

And so begins a charming story of teenagers in love, figuring out how to relate to each others' antithetical crowds and what to say to keep Him from figuring out how scared you are, what the hell do I do with my hands, am I staring at his eyes too long, good god not a boner no please god no....

I will not lie: I don't care for the YA genre at all because being a teenager was a fucking misery and I'd just as soon not relive it. What I am saying is, this book and I? We weren't going to be besties. Until I found out about the teleporting thing. Well, this changes everything and how, gimme gimme now. The added levels of anxiety, of learning how to use something he'd never so much as conceptualized could exist, plus his *amazing* new superpower's implications...yeah, totally hooked me. Plus the entire parent-amazingness plus irritating overprotectiveness, how he's so close with his Rainbow Alliance pals, his teddy bear bestie Alec, the Meeples game shop loveliness. I was so deeply delighted by these good-memory echoes. Then, in my usual careless fashion, I read it, liked it, laughed out loud until my sides hurt three separate and distinct times, and...forgot to write a review.

For two years. Holy fuckme, two solid years. I am a bad boy.

So, as I am also a registered Republican (long story...Warren/Social Democrat who's never voted GOP in his entire life), I'm going to blame someone else: Author Burgoine dropped two w-bombs. It sapped my will to write. See? It's all his fault.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

BLACKFISH CITY
SAM J. MILLER
Ecco
$11.99 trade paper or $9.99 ebook editions, available now

KINDLE EDITION ONLY $1.99!

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: After the climate wars, a floating city is constructed in the Arctic Circle, a remarkable feat of mechanical and social engineering, complete with geothermal heating and sustainable energy. The city’s denizens have become accustomed to a roughshod new way of living, however, the city is starting to fray along the edges—crime and corruption have set in, the contradictions of incredible wealth alongside direst poverty are spawning unrest, and a new disease called “the breaks” is ravaging the population.

When a strange new visitor arrives—a woman riding an orca, with a polar bear at her side—the city is entranced. The “orcamancer,” as she’s known, very subtly brings together four people—each living on the periphery—to stage unprecedented acts of resistance. By banding together to save their city before it crumbles under the weight of its own decay, they will learn shocking truths about themselves.

Blackfish City is a remarkably urgent—and ultimately very hopeful—novel about political corruption, organized crime, technology run amok, the consequences of climate change, gender identity, and the unifying power of human connection.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM MY LOCAL LIBRARY. SUPPORT YOUR LIBRARIES!

My Review: This is a delightful read. The investment you make in the first 100 pages pays off in a rich, enfolding experience of very able, capable worldbuilding by Author Miller.

Four PoV characters seems like a lot, I know, but each presents the reader with a different lens on a world that is all about where you are in its hierarchy as to what it looks like, feels like, and how Qaanaaq functions to meet your needs. Wealthy and privileged and bored Fill and Kaev, males at opposite ends of the city's caste system, and Kaev the professional fight-thrower is about to slip a few more rungs down the ladder. Ankit and non-binary Soq are the mobile middle-dwellers, each functioning in their differing-status jobs to support and/or subvert the power structure. Soq the messenger, the Mercury of Qaanaaq, was probably my favorite PoV in the book. The stealth they possess; the invisibility that rejecting binaries confers on them; all the moments of revelation this leads to make them a character I'd've loved to hear more from.

Author Miller is a top-notch talent, a maker of archetypes and a weaver of worlds whose skills are already as sharp as many with much longer résumés. What points of complaint I have are negligible compared to the central, overarching concerns he presents in this three-year-old and already timeless title.

Some of my favorite lines:

Money is a mind, the oldest artificial intelligence. Its prime directives are simple, it's programming endlessly creative. Humans obey it unthinkingly, with cheerful alacrity. Like a virus, it doesn't care if it kills its host. It will simply flow on to someone new.
–and–
The American fleet had lacked a lot of things—food, shelter, fuel, civil liberties—but it hadn’t lacked weapons. The global military presence that had made the pre-fall United States so powerful, and then helped cause their collapse, had left them with all sorts of terrifying toys.
–and–
“Fine line between good business and a fucking war crime,” he said. “Ain’t that the goddamn epitaph of capitalism.”

THE ARMORED SAINT, being an almost-5 star appreciation of a writer's unexpected gifts

THE ARMORED SAINT
MYKE COLE (The Sacred Throne #1)
Tor.com Publishing
$17.99 hardcover, available today!

Rating: 4.9* of five

The Publisher Says: In a world where any act of magic could open a portal to hell, the Order insures that no wizard will live to summon devils, and will kill as many innocent people as they must to prevent that greater horror. After witnessing a horrendous slaughter, the village girl Heloise opposes the Order, and risks bringing their wrath down on herself, her family, and her village.

THE PUBLISHER SENT ME AN ARC...THANKS FOLKS

My Review: I have a confession to make right off the bat: I didn't request this book. My Tor.com Publishing contact, knowing I am big on books with queer representation, figured I'd like this and sent it along. I looked at it in some surprise because it's by Myke Cole, The Shadow Ops-superhero-y military SF guy. If you've paid me the smallest bit of attention before now, you know I detest superhero-y crap and am only enjoying milSF from a gay-male PoV these days. I was a history major. I've had my fill of battlefield stuff for its own sake. Talk to ME, the elderly queer gent, not the strategist/armchair general, or I got better uses for my eyeblinks.

Author Cole, I am profoundly sorry I pigeonholed your work. I was wrong to do so and I'm glad to learn the error of my intolerant ways in so pleasant a fashion.

This fantasy world is deeply satisfying. It's oppressively ruled by a military/religious Order, but run in time-honored community-based democratic ways. Being staunchly anti-religion, that setup is one I'll buy into immediately. I'm not insensible to its relevance to the current state of affairs in our current US, our very own Russian satellite state, either, though that is not to ascribe my beliefs to Author Cole. I am not acquainted with him and make no representation that what *I* take away from his work is what he intended that I take away from it. That disclaimer being made, moving on.

The basis of this story is simple: How does a person, raised in a world that does not jibe with the True North on their inborn moral compass, survive and live and love in it? Can that happen without a struggle, a fight, a battle, or even an outright war? (MAJOR SPOILER: Nope.) What does it take to be authentically yourself in a world that dislikes you for being who you are?

Heloise Factor demonstrates her nature as a skeptic and a misfit from page one of the book, so I'm not really spoilering anything. Heloise confronts the arrogant cruelty of the adult world from page one and is saved from the terrible consequences awaiting the powerless for protesting abuse of power by the skin of her teeth. It's a terrific way to understand the worldview of Heloise's society and get the general course the book will take from here on in. Heloise intuitively understands the Buddha's injunction: "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it or who says it, unless it agrees with your own reason and common sense."

Her father was lying, not just to her, but to himself. Worst of all, he expected her to repeat the lies, to act as though up was down of her own free will. It was a stupid, wicked way to live, and the smoke still smudging the darkening sky showed her how it ended.

Beautifully said, perfectly true, and in the context of a young person just coming into her rightful place in the world, immensely powerful. It *is* a stupid, wicked way to live and it behooves us as citizens of a world that squashes our inner selves daily to remember that "First, do no harm" is not just Hippocrates talking to doctors but the accumulated wisdom of the ages speaking loud and clear to each and every one of us.

One of the squashings of personal truth has always been sexuality. Female sexuality has come in for the most squashing in modern times. The very existence of female sexuality, of women's right to control their own bodies and use them as they see fit, is taking center stage in the culture wars at last. Part of that demand for control includes the right of a woman to be in an intimate relationship with another woman. This sets religious nuts aflame, as we all know. Heloise's society is as homophobic as our own. Luckily for Heloise, like we would want for any child ready to burst into adult sexual flower, she gets good, solid, commonsensical guidance:

No. It is a person you love. Not a name. Not a she or a he. A person in all their shining glory. There is a thing in us, Heloise. A seed. It makes us who we are. It is our core. That is the thing we love. It alone exists. It alone is holy. It has no home, no name. It is neither male nor female. It is greater than that.

How I wish someone had said similar words to me when I was first mooning about, utterly in love with Davy Jones of the Monkees! I assure you that my longings were understood and VERY MUCH NOT supported by my "family." Heloise's society is down on her womanhood and her same-sex sexuality. Author Cole has added to her burden of seeing through the veil of lies she's been force-fed. Now what else can go wrong in the woman-child's life?

Oh my heck.

Obviously I want you to buy and read the book, so I can't get too detailed or else why bother? Suffice it to say that Author Cole is a mean, mean man who has no smallest shred of kindness to extend to Heloise. Which is what the reading of fiction is for, right? The ancient Hellenic society that invented drama and comedy did so for this very purpose, after all, and called it catharsis. The deep cleansing of experiencing intense emotions from a safe, removed place is the source of story addiction, I am certain. What could possibly be more indicative of this than the long survival of the Mahabharata, the Iliad, the Bible? Humans are built to need story to survive. Our very consciousness could be a by-product of the mind creating explanatory narratives.

So Heloise is out of sync with her culture's narrative, and from the get-go she has a visceral experience of what happens to those who flout the keepers of the narrative's rules. And then sees her honored and beloved father support the master (!) narrative, even though it means condemning another to almost certain death, so the Greater Good will be served. And *still* she refuses to conform, to knuckle under and do what is expected instead of what is Right. That's what makes her journey one we should all follow, at the very least between the boards of a book. I hope people with probably-lesbian young (grand-)daughters will buy this book and give it to them, as well as any and all adolescents wrestling with the certainty that they're just different somehow. (Sneak in a read yourself, you'll like it too.)

The minuses of the book are fairly few: There aren't adult female models for Heloise to emulate so one wonders how she got the idea a mere girl could do what she sets out to do; the Standard Fantasy Trope of Capitalizing Things To Make Them Different is in evidence; the ghastly scourge of Adolescent Exceptionalism (see what I did there? heh) is abundantly present. In fact, if the entire point of the book wasn't so exactly in line with my own inner agenda, Heloise's headstrong foolishness in taking on the entire adult world's power structure would make me roll my eyes and consign the book to the recycle pile (which, I hasten to add, does not mean the trash but the catch-and-release world of BookMooch).

As it is, I think Heloise's theme was sung in 1979 by McGuinn, Clark and Hillman. She deserved so much more than she got from her world, as do so very many children. It's long past time adults recognized this and got on the change bandwagon. Here in the US, we need to make our children safe from death while they're at school, at home, at church (if they're forced to go there), the movie theater, the mall....

This sounds like one of my five-star reviews...where's that last tenth of a star? I took it away because I am gut-churningly jealous of how young and handsome Author Cole is. Petty of me, I know, but there it is.

TRAIN TO POKIPSE, the last book midwifed by the legendary Barney Rosset

TRAIN TO POKIPSE
RAMI SHAMIR
Underground Editions
$9.99 trade paper, $7.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Set in New York during the George W. Bush years, TRAIN TO POKIPSE has become an underground critical sensation since it was first published in a limited, highly sought-after edition in 2012. The last book to be edited and championed by famed publisher Barney Rosset, POKIPSE bookends a literary canon of twentieth century masters that includes Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, and William S. Burroughs. Including a beautiful new introduction from Occupy Wall Street co-creator Micah White, TRAIN TO POKIPSE is finally available to a mass audience in this first-ever digital edition. White, who was named one of Esquire Magazine's most impacting millennials, reasserts TRAIN TO POKIPSE's standing as the the millennial generation's foremost literary work: "The novel you are about to read is a timeless chronicle of the psychological origins—the collective mood and affect—that catalyzed Occupy Wall Street... TRAIN TO POKIPSE deftly captures the essence of what compelled the millennial generation of cognitariat youth, over-educated and burdened with student debt, to suddenly throw aside ironic nihilism and rise up in an earnest spiritual insurrection."

My Review: Rami knows me from Twitter, where we both follow "Barney's Wall," a tribute account to publishing legend Barney Rosset. I got a Kindle copy of the book after we had discussed it for a while; I wasn't sure what I'd find, but had confidence in Barney's taste. It was not misplaced.

I was in Manhattan's downtown scene in the 80s and 90s, and had a blast. That's all I'm going to say in public. I recognized the life that our main character is living as my own attempt to run away from crippling depression and the wretched misery of anxiety that I never knew was there. I figured that was how everyone felt; none of us talked about it because, well, why?

Like Rami's creation, I also had relationships that rotted away from under me; I didn't think it was my fault, of course, but hey presto! comes the dawn and my self-sabotage smacked me in the teeth. Unlike the main character in Rami's novel, I waited until I was 54 to crack under the strain of coping and then spent four and a half months in the bin. I have to wonder, having read this novel, if I wouldn't have done better to have cracked thirty years earlier...but anyway, all of which is to say I relate. I relate to this little pisher's adolescent posturing, angst, escapism, lust...it's all part of me as much as it's part of the narrator.

That's a fine feat of writing, ladies and gents. A man closer to sixty than to forty reads himself into a book written by someone younger than his own child? Impressive prose-making. It's a wonderful feeling to see the art of storytelling safe in the hands of the millennials, even the dangerous high-wire balancing act of non-linear narrative is alive and well. It's there, however, that I grade Rami down a bit.

Non-linear narrative in TRAIN TO POKIPSE, with its time-shifts and varying ages of one narrator, requires something to knit it together. That something is up to the author; Rami chose a big risky knitting yarn in using the cocaine habit. It isn't entirely successful because unless one's been there it's simply repetitive unrelatable woollyness. Coke makes you feel sharp and masterful; then you crash into a vat of lint. (So I'm told.) (It says here.) That's fine for a shortish stint in a novel, but grows dull. What he has written here is faithful to the experience, no argument. But the dullness of the experience is in its many pleasures vanishing in that vat of lint.

But let's not forget that it takes big people to make big mistakes, and that this is a first novel. Rami Shamir. Learn his name, because you'll be hearing it again. And again. Thank the good Muses for that!