FOMO

Katkov’s novel follows the travails of a wealthy white gay man and his best friend, a Black woman, in Palm Springs, California.

Stanford Swanson and Bob Ingraham are a wealthy married couple living in a beautiful house in Palm Springs. Stanford considers himself happy and very much in love (“Bliss all around, quite frankly”), even though he’s had to give up his dreams of working in landscape design to support his husband. So, it’s a shock when Bob suddenly announces he’s leaving Stanford for a much younger man; apparently, Bob has FOMO, the fear of missing out. The narrative follows Stanford as he tries to muddle through his heartbreak with the help of his best friend, Charlene. She’s an attorney and a single mother to a college-bound teenager, and although her skill is obvious to everyone, she still hasn’t made partner at her firm—she’s Black, and she’s a woman, and there’s little doubt those are the reasons why. Even though Stanford faces challenges as a gay man, he’s still a wealthy WASP in Palm Springs, and the two friends have many spirited discussions about bigotry and oppression. Together, they also try to help Char’s son, Hakeem. He’s fallen in love with a white girl even wealthier than Stanford, and her parents are virulent racists. These three carry the majority of the novel’s points of view, though many other characters get their own chances to tell their stories. The prose is full of rich detail about the lives of the characters and about Palm Springs as a place. The book has a soapy tone, both melodramatic and funny, that the author pulls off very well. Katkov makes compelling points about race, queerness, and generational divides, though he sometimes makes these points in hackneyed, ham-fisted ways. The book’s length also works against it—the last few chapters extend the story in a way that renders the narrative less powerful and less believable, though readers might appreciate getting to spend more time with these characters.

Melodramatic, fizzy, and fun, though at times overdone.