An inventive novel that displays the scope of its author’s ambitions.
An unnamed narrator and his elderly interlocutor weave together forgotten queer histories in Torres’ second novel, following We the Animals (2011).
When the 20-something narrator wakes up from a blackout to find his kitchen flooded, he drives into the desert to visit Juan, an elderly friend who lives with “a badling of queer ducks” in a housing complex called the Palace. In exchange for a place to stay, the narrator agrees to carry on Juan’s life project, which involves a (real) 1941 research study called Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns. Though the research was begun in 1935 by Jan Gay, a lesbian anthropologist, the author named in the published study was psychiatrist George W. Henry, who used the text to pathologize homosexuality. Perusing Juan’s copy of the study, the narrator discovers largely blacked-out pages featuring highlighted fragments of text that Juan calls “little poems of illumination,” exercises in erasure that attempt to wrest the text from Dr. Henry and blow life back into the individual testimonies collected by Gay. Scans of the blacked-out pages of Sex Variants, in addition to related photographs and documents from Gay’s fictional archive, punctuate the novel’s short chapters, which capture Juan and the narrator’s conversations. Composed of stories both real and invented, collective and personal—Juan frequently asks the narrator to tell him about his sexual exploits—the novel's interlocutory structure recalls Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spider Woman. As playful, inventive, and at times kaleidoscopic as the book may be, the dialogue between Juan and the narrator often comes across as forced, with some blocks of storytelling (including the entirety of Torres’ short story “Reverting to a Wild State,” which was published in The New Yorker in 2011) feeling wedged in. The novel shines and surprises, though, in sections where the characters interweave cultural and historical artifacts, as well as memory and literary references, to reconstruct and revise queer history. Here, the novel’s central question about where storytelling ends and history begins comes to the fore, albeit with no clear resolution. It's up to the reader, the narrator concludes, to decide where truth and fiction converge.
An inventive novel that displays the scope of its author’s ambitions.Pub Date: Oct. 10, 2023
ISBN: 9780374293574
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.
A love story about a life of second chances.
In Nassau, in the Bahamas, casino detective Vincent LaPorta grills Alfie Logan, who’d come up a winner three times in a row at the roulette table and walked away with $2 million. “How did you do it?” asks the detective. Alfie calmly denies cheating. You wired all the money to a Gianna Rule, LaPorta says. Why? To explain, Alfie produces a composition book with the words “For the Boss, to Be Read Upon My Death” written on the cover. Read this for answers, Alfie suggests, calling it a love story. His mother had passed along to him a strange trait: He can say “Twice!” and go back to a specific time and place to have a do-over. But it only works once for any particular moment, and then he must live with the new consequences. He can only do this for himself and can’t prevent anyone from dying. Alfie regularly uses his power—failing to impress a girl the first time, he finds out more about her, goes back in time, and presto! She likes him. The premise is of course not credible—LaPorta doesn’t buy it either—but it’s intriguing. Most people would probably love to go back and unsay something. The story’s focus is on Alfie’s love for Gianna and whether it’s requited, unrequited, or both. In any case, he’s obsessed with her. He’s a good man, though, an intelligent person with ordinary human failings and a solid moral compass. Albom writes in a warm, easy style that transports the reader to a world of second chances and what-ifs, where spirituality lies close to the surface but never intrudes on the story. Though a cynic will call it sappy, anyone who is sick to their core from the daily news will enjoy this escape from reality.
Have tissues ready as you read this. A small package will do.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780062406682
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.
After being released from prison, a young woman tries to reconnect with her 5-year-old daughter despite having killed the girl’s father.
Kenna didn’t even know she was pregnant until after she was sent to prison for murdering her boyfriend, Scotty. When her baby girl, Diem, was born, she was forced to give custody to Scotty’s parents. Now that she’s been released, Kenna is intent on getting to know her daughter, but Scotty’s parents won’t give her a chance to tell them what really happened the night their son died. Instead, they file a restraining order preventing Kenna from so much as introducing herself to Diem. Handsome, self-assured Ledger, who was Scotty’s best friend, is another key adult in Diem’s life. He’s helping her grandparents raise her, and he too blames Kenna for Scotty’s death. Even so, there’s something about her that haunts him. Kenna feels the pull, too, and seems to be seeking Ledger out despite his judgmental behavior. As Ledger gets to know Kenna and acknowledges his attraction to her, he begins to wonder if maybe he and Scotty’s parents have judged her unfairly. Even so, Ledger is afraid that if he surrenders to his feelings, Scotty’s parents will kick him out of Diem’s life. As Kenna and Ledger continue to mourn for Scotty, they also grieve the future they cannot have with each other. Told alternatively from Kenna’s and Ledger’s perspectives, the story explores the myriad ways in which snap judgments based on partial information can derail people’s lives. Built on a foundation of death and grief, this story has an undercurrent of sadness. As usual, however, the author has created compelling characters who are magnetic and sympathetic enough to pull readers in. In addition to grief, the novel also deftly explores complex issues such as guilt, self-doubt, redemption, and forgiveness.
With captivating dialogue, angst-y characters, and a couple of steamy sex scenes, Hoover has done it again.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-2560-7
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2021
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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