‘Book Nook’ Archives
Reviews: Between Boyfriends, The Midnight Hunt, Hot Stuff, Concerning E.M. Forster
{Between} Boyfriends, by Michael Salvatore. Kensington Books, 328 pages, $15 paper. Tart tongues, caustic commentary, the objectification of less-than-perfect bodies, an overbearing mother, an absent – well, dead – father, angst about aging, revulsion at the sight of a wee penis, men yearning for love but settling for sex: this saucy soap [...]
Reviews: Christopher Rice, Monica Nolan
The Moonlit Earth, by Christopher Rice. Scribner, 368 pages, $25 hardcover. Terrorist bombings, family secrets, sibling conflicts, corruptive wealth, maze-like conspiracies, a closeted 18-year-old Muslim scion and a handsome homo flight attendant: Rice stuffs a whole lot of plot into his fifth novel. The story is somewhat dense, with oodles of [...]
Handmade Love
Handmade Love, by Julie R. Enszer. A Midsummer Night’s Press, 64 pages, $11.95 paper. There is nothing coy about Enszer’s poetry. With seductive clarity, she celebrates sexuality – her own, that of other women, and of men. In “First Kiss,” she yearns to kiss another teenage girl. In “Jade Ring,” she fantasizes about warming a [...]
The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet
The Big Bang Symphony, by Lucy Jane Bledsoe. Terrace Books/University of Wisconsin Press, 340 pages, $24.95 hardcover. There are four memorable characters in Bledsoe’s novel about yearning and healing. Three of them are women. The fourth is Antarctica, which Bledsoe has visited three times – feet-on-the-ground research that captures the [...]
Spanking New
Spanking New, by Clifford Henderson. Bold Strokes Books, 288 pages, $16.95 paper. Spanky, the narrator of this delicious novel, is an unborn baby who can flit from one character’s thoughts and emotions to another’s – a storytelling perspective that, from a less able author, might have come off as a diaper-load of a gimmick. But Henderson, [...]
Probation
Probation, by Tom Mendicino. Kensington Books, 344 pages, $15 paper. Perfect wife, perfect home, perfect job – well, a perfect job if you like being a traveling salesman, and Andy Nocera does; he was born to sell. But perfection implodes when repressed queer Andy is caught with his pants down in a roadside rest area. Pulled strings lead to a [...]
Because I Have Loved and Hidden It
Because I Have Loved and Hidden It, by Elise Moser. Cormorant Books, 262 pages, $21 paper. A seductive Montreal is the setting for this melodic meditation on loss, love and self-discovery. Julia’s husband has walked out on a marriage she thought quite cozy. Her emotionally distant mother has died, leading a melancholic Julia to dwell on why [...]
Just Kids
Book Marks Just Kids, by Patti Smith. Ecco Press, 280 pages, $27 hardcover. Though the likes of William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg wander through the musty Chelsea Hotel hallways – where the juiciest bits are set – of this polished gem of a remembrance, they’re merely bit players, albeit colorful. The real stars, memorialized in [...]
The Others
The Others, by Seba Al-Herz. Seven Stories Press, 328 pages, $17.95 paper. Queer readers are likely to be drawn first to this novel’s Sapphic content, as a young Shi’a woman attending a girl’s college in Saudi Arabia becomes physically and emotionally entangled with other women. The nameless character’s flirtations alternate between [...]
Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence For a Taste of Stardom
Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence For a Taste of Stardom, by Aiden Shaw. Alyson Books, 258 pages, $15.95 paper. Can a book about compulsive sex for pay and unceasing drugged-out nights and days be charming? Yes it can. Shaw is a 21-year-old college dropout with “massive boy meat” – in the panted words of his first-ever trick, a porcine [...]
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