I’m back already. I told you I read a lot on vacation.
Pride Month is here, and the gay people around you are exhausted! Some of that is for good reason. The month provides a near constant stream of celebratory events that keeps us busy when wildfire smoke doesn’t keep us locked down inside the house. I work in the LGBTQ+ nonprofit space, and I tell people all the time that June for workers in the gay industry is what December is like for elves. (Alas, gay elves are saddled with busy months a couple times a year. Intersectionality!)
There are also far more bleak reasons why your LGBTQ+ friends and family are going through it. The fact is that we are living through a coordinated push led by national anti-LGBTQ+ groups wherein legislators across the country have introduced hundreds of bills – more than 800 at last count - that target our communities, particularly transgender and non-binary individuals. The attacks on our community are relentless and changing every day. It’s a great time for allies to speak up and show out. Encourage your libraries and school district not to cave to the pressure to ban books, yell back at a far right protestor at Pride, or just invite a community member to dinner or a drink. Everything counts!
The fates thought it would be fitting for Pride Month to send books my way in which gays go to hell and back - sometimes symbolically, sometimes literally. We love an accidental theme! I hope as you read through these books or other queer wonders, you’ll consider the ways you might join the fight if you’re not already part of it.
THE LIBRARY IS OPEN
In Memoriam
by Alice Winn (2023)
It’s kind of wild that this is my *second* World War One m/m romance of the year, but here we are. Trench Love is having a moment. This time, we’re in an English boarding school in the lead up to the war, and the boys are chomping at the bit to get sent into battle. Some of them are lying about their ages just to fake eligibility to fight for their country, and young women are wandering the country handing white feathers to the men whom they find cowardly for not enlisting. Tough crowd!
At this particular boarding school, our protagonists sit around and read poetry to one another with all of their friends. The whole group of them is a very affectionate bunch. In fact, I was surprised to learn that they were all kind of hooking up with each other, which I suppose explains all the poetry. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this 1910s boarding school/bathhouse energy, but one student essentially says that boarding school is the place where it’s safe to exercise (and exorcise) all of their homosexual energy before they leave and find the women they’ll settle for during the rest of their lives. The whole book reminded me a little of that 30 Rock episode where Jenna says she hates the troops because she mistakenly thought she was talking about theater troupes. "They think what they do is so important! But it’s just a bunch of gay guys that like to get in silly costumes and prance around.”
Two of these students have the feeling that their dalliances may not be a passing phase, which means trouble. One of them, half-German at a time when it’s rather inconvenient to be so, enlists early to run away from his feelings. The other follows his lover into the war. I joke, but what follows is a heart-wrenching, emotional journey through the trenches as they try to stay alive for one another. We’ve got prison breaks, twists and turns, and some pretty heavy sex scenes. I was moved! All along, the major theme that runs through the novel, rather graphically at at that, is that war is hell no matter whom you love.
Read it if you like: The fact that WWI is having a moment, uptight British boys, gay Downton Abbey, prison breaks, an earned ending.
The People Who Report More Stress: Stories
by Alejandro Varela (2023)
The very first book I featured on this little project of mine was by Alejandro Varela, and I loved that one too. This one is a connected set of stories that features some overlapping characters and political philosophies. We ride along through a roller coaster relationship between a narrator with radical politics and his milquetoast husband - will they open things up? Will they get back together again? Will they ever agree on anything? We follow a Latinx childcare worker who tutors a Scandinavian family and teaches them Spanish through Selena songs. We meet an immigrant family trying to make ends by reselling high end clothes on the black market to customers at a restaurant.
It takes a really clever set of short stories to feel like you’ve just read a novel when you’ve finished, and Varela does that here. I love that he’s not afraid to make characters (who may stand-ins for him) difficult or unlikeable. I also love how many of them happen to be queer, neurotic, and maybe not so fun to be around at parties because they turn every conversation into something political. Representation matters!
I loved this book, especially how the last three stories clandestinely come together to create a very moving novella about the ways queer couples show up for one another, not to mention a hellish look at dating app conversations. This author is on my short list of folks I’ll check out whenever they write anything.
Read it if you like: connected short stories, strident queers, New York stories, dark humor, being an Alejandro Varela fanboy.
White Cat, Black Dog: Stories
by Kelly Link (2023)
How does one explain Kelly Link to the uninitiated? The New Yorker just called her work “easy to revere and difficult to explain” in a recent profile, and this sums her up pretty well. She’s pretty much a legend in the fantasy fiction world, and she’s a Pulitzer finalist and a MacArthur Genius fellow. I do not always know what’s going on in her stories, but it almost feels beside the point to fully understand them. It’s actually kind of comforting to not completely get it. It feels cliche to say there’s a vibe, but if you’ve ever read Link, you know there’s a vibe.
In this collection, she spins less familiar fairy tales into modern, magical stories. There’s a gay couple that literally have to go to hell (and Iceland) and back to make things work. There are talking cats that help the youngest son of a rich scion find his way to his father’s attention. A queer woman desperately tries to get home to her family for an urgent appointment as the world works against her. There are even Penn grad students you actually want to be around! As I’ve intimated, her imagination is limitless.
This is not a related collection of stories, except that they all reinterpret a fairy tale of times past. I’ll be honest, there are 7 of them - 4 of which I loved, 2 I liked, and 1 that wasn’t for me. This feels like a successful collection to me, and I’ll continue to follow Link to whatever strange corners of her world she deigns to bring us.
Read it if you like: weird short stories, fractured fairy tales, a generous heap of queer characters, being haunted, really weird short stories.
LIGHTNING ROUND
Maybe you’re in the mood for the Lambda Award winner for gay fiction this year, a wistful immigration tale.
Perhaps you’ll want to check out this author’s past work before his next summer release: a Southern gothic tale of parents of a queer couple trying to get to the bottom of the murder of their children.
If you’re the kind of person who talks about missing when MTV played music, you’ll want to read this memoir.
Until next time…happy reading!