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reviews
by gregg shapiro
Fall for a good read Short story shelf
Novel pages
Fresh Complaint: Stories (FSG, 2017), the first short story collection by Jeffrey Eugenides, author of the groundbreaking gender identity novel Middlesex, as well as The Virgin Suicides, and features 10 stories, including “Air Mail” which was selected for the 1997 edition of The Best American Short Stories by “Brokeback Mountain” author Annie Proulx.
Set in contemporary Israel, The Book of Love and Hate (Akashic, 2017) by Lambda Literary Award-winning author Lauren Sanders follows failed Olympic speed skater Jennifer on a quest to find her missing billionaire father as she encounters “fake Orthodox Jews, queer Palestinians on the run” and a host of others.
Outside is the Ocean (University of Iowa Press, 2017) by Matthew Lansburgh, winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, consists of 15 linked short stories about German immigrant Heike who has been making her way in America since she left her homeland at 20. Edited by gay writer Benjamin Taylor, Debriefing: Collected Stories (FSG, 2017) compiles all of late, queer writer and intellectual Susan Sontag’s short fiction under one cover, with “Project for a Trip to China” and “Unguided Tour” included among the 11 stories.
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LIVING OUT
Lately, gay actor and vlogger Jeffery Self has been making a name for himself as the author of Y/A novels, including 2016’s Drag Teen. His new Y/A novel, A Very, Very Bad Thing (Push, 2017), is about the things that teenage boys do in the name of love and how quickly they can go wrong, especially when one is the son of a homophobic TV evangelist. An Unkindness of Ghosts (Akashic, 2017), the sci-fi debut by Rivers Solomon, takes place aboard a spaceship named Matilda and features a teased and taunted main character named Aster, described as “odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn” who is on a mission to discover the potential connection between the deaths of her mother and the Matilda’s potentate.
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