Ostensibly about gay men getting older and being alone, this novel is really about everyone getting older and being alone.
Gay men are the life of the party, we’re told, but what happens when it’s time to die?
The unnamed narrator of this mordant, unflinching novel is mired in what he calls a “predicament” quite different from that experienced by the hip young gay men at the heart of Holleran’s most admired novel, Dancer From the Dance (1978), that crucial narrative set in 1970s Manhattan. This novel is about gay men dying alone in a small, conservative, Christian town in North Florida. “Halloween, alas, was the only time there was anything even slightly campy about our town,” the narrator complains. In his 60s, he's friends, or at least experiences a “shared loneliness,” with Earl, another gay man, who’s 20 years older; Earl’s illnesses provide a grim education in being old and, worse, getting even older. Earl and the narrator talk about the “UPS deliveryman, or a sale on ice cream at the grocery store, or a new person who’d moved into the rental cottages down the street.” And yet Holleran makes these everyday topics, and the seemingly uneventful days of the narrator and his friends, into thrilling fiction. That is partly because this novel feels confessional, with the narrator divulging thoughts and behavior that most of us would be afraid to share. Holleran is fiercely a pointillist. His observations about the minute details of his narrator’s life feel revelatory—and not always specific to the lives of gay men. “Love and kindness have a lineage their recipients know nothing about,” the narrator declares, including the sometimes unrequited kindness of helping someone else die.
Ostensibly about gay men getting older and being alone, this novel is really about everyone getting older and being alone.Pub Date: June 7, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-3746-0096-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: March 15, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2022
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Lapena’s talents shine in this irresistible novel about revenge, betrayal, and secrets.
So many suspects, so little evidence in Lapena’s latest tale of domestic suspense.
Busy mom Bryden Frost doesn’t see it coming after a morning fender bender involving a Tesla and its charming owner, Derek Gardner, sets her on a collision course with fate. Or does it? Just as in her other fast-moving, women-centric novels, including her breakout The Couple Next Door (2016), Lapena’s female protagonists appear to be living normal lives that some people might even envy—at least at first. When Bryden’s husband, Sam, returns home from work in Albany, New York, to find her missing but her purse and phone still in their apartment, a police investigation ensues. Did Bryden run away? Was she kidnapped? Or could she still be somewhere in the building? Sam is the prime suspect until police Det. Jayne Salter and her team hear from a source that Bryden was having an affair with Derek, something he denies. As Lapena builds her twisty plot, we soon see that these two men aren’t the only people who could be responsible for Bryden’s disappearance. Her sister, Lizzie, who has always been jealous of Bryden, has an addiction she’s hiding from the police, and Bryden’s best friend, Paige, carries a damaging secret as well. And what about the neighbor who was recently accused but not charged with kidnapping and raping a woman? Lapena excavates everyone’s secrets, exposing what’s really going on in the lives of Bryden’s family and friends. None of it is pretty. Lapena’s timely tale mixes the formidable dangers involved with online true-crime addiction with classic police work in a story that will make you wonder what secrets your family and friends are hiding and who, if anyone, you really know or can trust.
Lapena’s talents shine in this irresistible novel about revenge, betrayal, and secrets.Pub Date: July 29, 2025
ISBN: 9780593832448
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2025
Come for the riveting father-son mystery, stay for the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory.
Losing Mom: heartfelt autofiction from a man who just may be Bob Dylan’s son.
“‘Uncanny, the way you look like him. Bob Dylan. You know his music?’” As soon as you encounter the premise of Sussman’s debut novel, you will surely Google him, and see that his resemblance to the man who wrote “Girl From the North Country” is somewhere beyond uncanny. Sussman has also published an article in Harper’s Magazine that explains the real-life basis of the novel—his mother’s year-long relationship with Dylan and a later meeting nine months before he was born. He magicks this material into a gorgeous, emotionally thrilling first-person novel chronicling the death of the narrator Evan’s mother from cancer, a period during which she finally shares more of the truth about her connection with Dylan, as well as other stories of her life, some terrible and some amazing. All of this has been completely hidden from Evan till now, despite the fact that he and June were very close in his childhood. Their emotional intimacy was built on play-acting and storytelling, on King Arthur and Harry Potter (the Potter saga is a surprising and important touchstone throughout), and also fraught due to her stormy relationships with his stepfather and other men. Despite these romantic disappointments, and things far worse than disappointment, June persists in believing, and wanting her son to believe, that there is nothing holier than love. As the novel opens, she has called him in London—Evan has lived abroad since college—to tell him she has cancer, though she withholds the seriousness of her condition for most of the book, continuing to pursue both holistic and Western treatment. The night he arrives, she serves him an alfresco dinner of homegrown vegetables: “The eggplant lay gleaming on its browned back. Beets glowed blood red. Crisped collard and kale lay entangled in the baking tray. In the pan the bloomed popcorn was spiced and golden.” They recite poetry to each other to bless the meal. The love that swells beneath this scene, and every scene, will just about knock you over.
Come for the riveting father-son mystery, stay for the most beautiful and moving mother-son story in recent memory.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2025
ISBN: 9780593835050
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin Press
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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