MIDDLE SPOON

A married man in an open relationship grieves his first breakup.

National Book Award finalist Varela’s new novel is told primarily through letters from an unnamed narrator to his former boyfriend. At the behest of one of his therapists, he begins drafting the emails in an effort to navigate their sudden breakup. The narrator, who has never felt heartbreak before, is left entirely unmoored and devastated. The novel’s seemingly straightforward conceit begins to shift as the rest of the narrator’s life comes into focus: He is happily married to his husband, has two children (one of whom is nonbinary), lives in Brooklyn, has an active social life, and works as a public health researcher and professor. Until recently, he was also in a polyamorous relationship with Ben, who likewise lives in Brooklyn and is nearly a decade younger. A whirlwind romance that deepened quickly into love, their relationship was great until the moment Ben dumped the narrator unceremoniously. Nearly swallowed by grief, he fills his overwhelmingly vulnerable letters with sorrow, pining, obsessive thoughts, anxiety, tangents, gay history, therapy speak, pop-culture diatribes, and everything in between. In one of the earliest emails, the narrator posits: “Maybe there’s something worthwhile in unorthodox relationships and atypical family structures. Maybe the world should adapt to us and not us to it.” Brushing up against social norms, the narrator dreams of a world that is not quite ready for them. In one letter, he remembers the half-serious joke his husband made about him wearing a T-shirt that says “My husband knows I’m cheating on him.” In another, he writes to his son about the bittersweet reality of being pioneers: “Those of us perched on the tips of branches have unique viewpoints of the forest.” The novel explores the beautiful complexity of unorthodox, progressive family dynamics with tenderness and humor in equal measure.

A touching yet provocative queer love story about defying societal expectations.