After a month of pride and celebrations, we’re taking July to honor the memory of the creativity and talent that was lost to the AIDS/HIV crisis, and those who work to preserve their memory.
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Book Review: “The Town of Babylon,” by Alejandro Varela
Babylon boasts all the hallmarks of suburbia: strip malls, single-family homes, and almost no sidewalks in sight. Andrés hates it. He grew up as one of the few low-income and non-white students in his Catholic high school, sneaking around with his classmate, Jeremy, to make out secretly in basements and the backseats of cars. Now, he’s a professor of public health, and openly (but not happily) married to his husband, Marco. Andrés returns to his hometown to care for his ailing father, but he resents this place where his leftist values are in the minority, and where his brother’s early death dredges up a quiet guilt about his own upward mobility. On a whim, Andrés decides to swing by his high school reunion, catalyzing a reckoning with his hometown.
The Town of Babylon plots Andrés’ family and classmates like data points: mapping their migrations into the town, the racial hierarchies that organized which families were segregated to which neighborhoods, or who held the jobs and who worked them. We follow Varela through the histories of Andrés’ immigrant parents (Álvaro and Rosario), his brother, his first love, his former best friend, and his homophobic classmate. At his high school reunion, Andrés can’t take off the glasses of his public health professorship: he throws around speculative statistics about how many people have diabetes, how many people’s parents are cops, and how many of his classmates are named “Lisa” or “Nicole.”
The scientific lens that Andrés brings to this homecoming tale offers rich ground for exploring questions of agency and social mobility–questions as pressing for a teenage Andrés as a present day one. Why did Álvaro and Rosario have to work so hard? Why was Paul so homophobic in high school? Why did Andrés go to college, and Henry didn’t? Toggling between the past and the present, Andrés struggles against statistics. He understands how our circumstances determine our lives, but he also wants things to be different. The public health perspective holds the power of narrative: to tell a story that might inflate or disappear a person’s agency over their own life. The Town of Babylon unfolds so beautifully because Varela is hyper-aware of this power, and his primary concern is with wielding it fairly.
So while Andrés can eloquently explain the social forces that caused his father’s ill health, his best friend’s seclusion in a psychiatric facility, or Henry’s death, he struggles with his inability to change these circumstances for the people he loves. To look at injustice and grapple with the question–what can, or what should, any one person do?–is an enormous task, and I’m not sure the novel succeeds in excavating the depths of where this question could lead. We end up lost in the many threads of backstory. The book is most interesting, I think, when Andrés’ optimism is checked by the realities he’s encountering, or when his politics are contradicted by his own desires. Speaking of desire, there’s also a gorgeous story of lost love embedded within Andrés’ homecoming. Jeremy disarms Andrés in a way that transforms his resolve to never look back at where he came from. Andrés has something to offer Babylon, and perhaps Babylon has something to offer him.
Varela’s compassion for his characters brings us sensitive portraits of queerness emerging in the cracks of American suburbia (metaphorically speaking–in Babylon there are still no sidewalks). Varela’s attention to the everyday negotiations of power and resistance are what make his book so fascinating to read. Babylon joins the ranks of books like Memorial by Bryan Washington, All The Water I’ve Seen Is Running by Elias Rodriques, or Little Fish by Casey Plett in tackling the generative messiness that arises when queer people return to their places and families of origin. If you want to read more of Alejandro Varela’s work, you’re in luck: his short story collection, The People Who Report More Stress, is out now. –Leo
June New Releases
Celebrate Pride with new queer books!
June 1 Releases
June 2 Releases
June 5 Releases
June 6 Releases
June 9 Releases
June 13 Releases
June 14 Releases
June 15 Releases
June 20 Releases
June 21 Releases
June 27 Releases
June 30 Releases
Book Review: “Monstrilio,” by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
What do monsters have to do with queer books? From Frankenstein’s monster to Nosferatu to the most obscure of X-Files cryptids, monsters are threats to “normal” straight society. There’s definitely rich analysis to be had about the historical associations between queerness and monstrosity. But monster media is also so much fun. Any Jennifer’s Body devotee knows that some of the best queer media plays up the thin line between fear and desire. Who doesn’t want the adrenaline rush of thinking they’re going to be eaten by Megan Fox?
While Frankenstein might be the first book we think of as the “monster novel,” its queer descendants are taking up the inhuman body to explore queer sexualities and life. If you’re chasing the thrill of reading authors like Carmen Maria Machado, Gretchen Felker-Martin, or Shirley Jackson, put Monstrilio at the top of your reading list.
When eleven-year-old Santiago passes away, his mother doesn’t cry. Instead, Magos does what feels natural: she cuts open Santiago’s body and extracts a piece of his lung, storing it in a jar for safekeeping. The lung becomes her secret stowaway, accompanying Magos to her mother’s home in Mexico City, where she retreats to grieve. On little but a folktale and a hunch, Magos spoons some chicken broth into the jar, watching for signs of life. Remarkably, the tiny piece of tissue grows and grows into a little creature, affectionately named Monstrilio. But the more the “grief creature” grows, the more his family struggles to satisfy his hunger.
Monstrilio is Gerardo Sámano Córdova’s debut novel. Divided into four parts, the story dedicates a section to each of its four central characters: Magos, Lena (the woman who is in love with her), Joseph (Santiago’s father), and a mysterious “M.” A writer and artist from Mexico City, Córdova’s affection for gothic images shines through his work. In Monstrilio, a family’s love for such a terrifying monster mirrors their struggle to reckon with their own queerness and deviance–the monster uncovers the monstrous within.
Grief might be where Monstrilio begins, but the story isn’t exactly a tear-jerker. Córdova’s writing is detached–the novel is ruled by an otherworldly logic from Magos’ very first cut into her son’s body. It’s the kind of dreamlike state when a loss is just so overwhelming that the pain becomes ambient, and nothing feels real. For Magos, if Santiago can be dead, maybe none of the rules of the world make sense. These logical slips give way to intimate, weighty realizations about grief that Córdova sneaks in between the more action-packed moments of the novel. The beats are quieter, but they’re certainly there. If you’re interested in reading about grief, Monstrilio offers a beautiful, human portrayal of how far a person will go to avoid confronting such an immense loss.
But as the moves forward, it becomes clear that Monstrilio is also built for fans of horror. Monstrilio’s uncontrolled hunger is made way more terrifying by his pointed fangs, jaw that can unhinge to the width of his body, and extra long limb built for swinging from branch to branch while he hunts. His family desperately tries to figure out how to contain him as he feasts on basement rats, neighborhood pets, and threatens to graduate to larger beasts. Córdova’s horror winks at genre conventions, but the way he writes gore is so visceral and inventive that it doesn’t land as redundant.
By the final section, Monstrilio has matured into a teenager, and his family encourages him to pass as human. He’s going to restaurants, working in a bookstore, and venturing onto dating apps to meet boys. As Córdova adopts M’s perspective, we realize that M doesn’t just feed on pets because he misses a meal, M is always hungry. Witnessing M’s desire to eat is so satisfying after reading three characters who repress their feelings so forcefully. Who can blame M? He wants to eat men! He was born this way, baby!
There’s an obvious parallel between M’s desire for men and his desire for human flesh. Córdova flirts with a commentary on social deviance that will resonate with queer readers, but it’s not overbearing. Rather than divorcing M’s queerness from his monstrous hunger, Córdova takes the likeness further, taking us through M’s teenaged dating app escapades as he tries to find – a boyfriend? A victim? The clever tension between cruising and hunting makes for a kinky, terrifying, and thrilling fourth act. It’s also what might align Monstrilio not with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but with Susan Stryker’s. Córdova doesn’t reinvest in “human” as a category any more than he invests in the straight or cis. In this book, the monster speaks back, and he doesn’t want to assimilate. — Leo
May New Releases
May 2 Releases
May 3 Releases
May 9 Releases
May 16 Releases
May 18 Releases
May 20 Releases
May 23 Releases
May 30 Releases
May Theme Table: AAPI Heritage Month
This month we’re putting the spotlight on authors of Asian-American, Pacific Islander, and Native Hawaiian heritage!
Fiction
Romance
Young Adult
Poetry
Graphic Novels
Biography and Memoir
Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Horror
April New Releases
April 4 Releases
April 11 Releases
April 15 Releases
April 18 Releases
April 25 Releases
April 26 Releases
GUEST POST: Nathan Tavares of A Fractured Infinity
Hey PAT @ Giovanni’s Room folks!
My name is Nathan Tavares and I’m the author of A Fractured Infinity, which came out last year from Titan Books. It’s my pleasure to temporarily usher you into an alternate reality—or at the very least take the reins of the blog for this guest post, where I’ll talk a little about my queer sci-fi debut novel, which I hope you’ll love.
For as long as I can remember, I have been a huge fan of all things sci-fi and weird, from the Goosebumps books I devoured as a kid, to Greek mythology, to superhero TV shows (namely, running around and trying to be like Xena). As I got older and figured out I was gay (Surprise! Somebody please tell my husband.), I noticed a big lack of queer people like me in sci-fi stories. What, you could have aliens and robots in these different and thrilling worlds, but no queer people? Weird.
Before I started writing A Fractured Infinity, I was adrift. The magazine I worked for in Boston had closed shop, I was still licking my wounds after a novel I had been working on for years didn’t get picked up by a publisher. I had the idea to just write the kind of book that I had always wanted to read, filled with queer people with big messy lives that weren’t plagued by coming-out trauma. I threw my favorite things in a big blender—fourth wall breaking, sarcasm, and robot drag queens, with a touch of theoretical physics (or a dumbed-down version that my liberal arts major mind could understand, anyway)—and got to writing. My wonderful agent and I pitched the story as “the film Arrival but make it gay,” and I’m thrilled that it’s now on bookshelves.
A FRACTURED INFINITY is near-ish future sc-ifi story about a washed-up filmmaker named Hayes who just can’t catch a break. One day, the physicist Yusuf shows up at his doorstep and whisks Hayes away to a secret research facility, where he learns that he’s somehow connected to a strange predictive device from another universe. And an alternate version of Hayes built it and sent it to our world. Soon, Hayes and Yusuf fall in love, and they must go on the run to save Yusuf’s life—even if that means sacrificing the whole multiverse.
I was really inspired by the cerebral sci-fi films I love so much, namely Contact, Arrival, and Interstellar. Besides those films, I looked to my favorite books to keep me going. Here are a few of them that I hope you’ll love as much as I did.
I reread this book all the time as a reminder of, “oh, that’s how a book should make you feel.” Between the character development, how Atwood weaves time around, and just the beauty of the language, Oryx and Crake is my favorite book ever. My copy is dog-eared and underlined everywhere. I once got a note that my writing in A Fractured Infinity was too pretty at times, and that sci-fi readers want more workmanlike language. I look to Atwood as proof of just the opposite. Sci-fi and speculative prose can still be beautiful and succinct at the same time.
I first read this novel maybe twenty years ago, and it’s stuck with me ever since. When I was thinking up alternate settings and world histories, it was a huge inspiration on how a few different decisions or events could alter a world so drastically. The Lathe of Heaven reminded me a lot about authority and trust you put in an author, too. In grad school workshops, you spend a lot of time picking apart stories and storylines, like “I didn’t buy that decision” or “I’m having a tough time believing this.” Le Guin reminded me with this book, “You know what? Sometimes an author makes a decision with an outlandish concept, and you just have to go along for the ride.”
I love Mastai’s original take on alternate universes and time travel. I read this when I was about halfway through the very first messy draft of A Fractured Infinity, and it inspired me in a big way. It sparked a big light-bulb moment that I needed to dive in and have my characters directly explore other worlds, and meet different versions of themselves.
I used to not write many queer characters in my stories when I was younger. I was probably still dealing with those last bits of shame about being gay, and wasn’t sure how large of an audience for queer stories there was. Reading Baldwin and other queer writers made me remember, “I want to read queer stories, so of course a lot of other people do.” He helped me dive in and write from the queer experience. I also love the conversational style of this novel. One thing that distracts me sometimes when I’m reading is overly-formal language, especially when a book is in the first person. This definitely helped me think of A Fractured Infinity as a like a conversation between my main character and the reader.
How do you pick one of Octavia E. Butler’s books? The world-building here (and the book in general) is so brutal and devastating, balanced out by the perspective of a main character who’s so perseverant. And talk about some scarily accurate predictions. I thought about Parable of the Sower when I was dreaming up a broken, de-United States of America that’s ravaged by climate change and social problems. A Fractured Infinity is definitely way, way less bleak, but the nightmares in Parable of the Sower helped me land somewhere between a dystopia and a technological utopia. Is mid-topia a thing?
Nathan Tavares is a writer from Boston, Massachusetts. He grew up in the Portuguese-American community of southeastern Massachusetts and developed a love for fantastical stories at an early age, from superheroes to mythology. He studied English in college and received his MFA in creative writing from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His editorial work celebrates queer culture and historically excluded communities, with pieces appearing in GQ, Out, and elsewhere.
April Table: GET YOUR SH*T TOGETHER
Oh my god, it’s already April.
Look, we gave you March to be messy: now you have to get it together. The next thing you know 2023 will be over. What did you do with your time?
Here is this month’s table of books that will let you know how to figure things out, get things done, and a couple of memoirs from people who managed to do just that.
Winter is over; it’s time to get going.
March New Releases
Greetings, March! It’s a huge month for queer new releases, from gay scammers to the latest Angela Davis biography (as a comic!) to sapphic tales of deep sea creatures. Take advantage of the warmer weather and take a stroll down to shop these titles as they arrive in store, or order online to get your new favorite book delivered to your door.
We’ll be updating this list throughout the month, so check back for more!
March 7 Releases
March 14
March 21
March 24
March 28