-
Two lovers went to the museum and wandered the rooms. He saw a painting and stood in front of it for too long. It was a few minutes before she realized he had gotten stuck. He was stuck looking at a painting. She stood next to him, looking at his face and then the face in the painting. What do you see? she asked. I don’t know, he said. He didn’t know. She was disappointed, then bored. He was looking at a face and she was looking at her watch. This is where everything changed. There was now a distance…
-
by Catherine Lacey 5/5 I LOVED this book. One of my top reads of 2026! I had only ever seen it in passing and hadn’t heard much about it, but now I’ve gathered that Biography of X is pretty popular, at least within a certain literary crowd. I bought my copy at a bookstore bar, and while I was sitting with my glass of wine reading it, three different people approached me to tell me how much they loved it. I almost always love an alternate history, and this one was original enough to stand on its own but also…
-
Beyond the curve in the road, past the old post office with the barred-up windows and the dead shrubs slumped by the graffiti-covered mailbox, there was a house. It had not been a home in some time. A man lived there, alone, dying, while the ghost of his son sat in his car with the engine running in the front driveway. Jean had been sitting in the car for some time now. She turned the engine off, once, about thirty minutes ago, and put her hand on the handle for a moment. She couldn’t make herself open the door. So…
-
by Joy Sullivan I’ve always been haunted by choice. I want the city and the forest.Freedom but also babies. A home and the open highway. I love it when other people choose anything for me—dinner spots,weekend plans, hiking trails. It’s one tiny decision I’m absolvedfrom making. To choose is to be culpable and as a formerevangelical kid, there are few things I hate more than beingculpable. But being unable to choose becomes its own choice. When youdon’t decide, a decision still arrives. Once I held the fleeting body of a farm cat newly struck on theside of a busy Ohio…
-
by Torrey Peters 4/5 I loved most of this novel. It’s very accessible queer lit, and I feel like it’s something I would be comfortable recommending to non-queer people and mainstream audiences. I think the comparison of the perspectives of trans women to divorced cis women is super clever, and I could see that strategy winning over some traditionally difficult audiences, should they happen to read Detransition, Baby. However, I did not like the ending at all. I mean, seriously, I hated that ending. I felt the book ultimately failed to explore what it set out to explore. I was…
-
Reaching blindly in the dark, acornsstill grow roots, even when shut in a metal tinin a dark, dry room. I should know,I put them there. I was six years old andI wanted a forest in my closet. I counted outone hundred acorns from beneath the post oakin the front yard, and I waited, and I waited, andI waited, until I forgot what I was waiting for.And the acorns grew. I have been like the roots, too: blind anddirty, secret, forgotten, reaching out for a shapethat my body could fill, yearning for a groundto stand on. I was waiting for a…
-
by Ocean Vuong The October leaves coming down, as if called. Morning fog through the wildrye beyond the train tracks. A cigarette. A good sweater. On the sagging porch. While the family sleeps. That I woke at all & the hawk up there thought nothing of its wings. That I snuck onto the page while the guards were shitfaced on codeine. That I read my books by the light of riotfire. That my best words came farthest from myself & it’s awesome. That you can blow a man & your voice speaks through his voice. Like Jonah through the whale.…
-
by Alexandra Vasti 3/5 This was the cheesiest of cheesy romances, to be sure, but it was better than I expected from the title. The characters fell flat for me, which is why I gave it three stars instead of four, but overall it was well-written and entertaining enough to breeze through quickly! I would have liked more slow burn and fewer cringy nicknames. I’d still recommend it to anyone looking for a historical sapphic romance!
-
by Simon Maddrell born just six months later in the same place, on the same island.even though i can’t act or sing or dance —but apart from that, we shared a common fear of cybermen and we couldn’t hide behind the same sofaeven though we had the same difference in our way. before it’s a sin was sung we tried to escape from shame— i hid in a similar island home, river-locked in the forest of dean.even though i was fifteen years behind your pink-palaced fun and follies, we were the man most likely to realise our ambitions with damn…
-
by Elena Ferrante 4/5 I read this for book club and loved it. I thought it was incredibly interesting and well-written, and I loved the extent to which I did (and didn’t) find it relatable. But only one other person in the group liked it! Everyone else said they found it boring—I was shocked! I think the main reason I liked it is because of the extent to which it poses itself as a story of two friends, while actually revealing a narrative much darker and more disturbing. My Brilliant Friend is ultimately a story of masculinity and the insidious…
-
Subscribe
Subscribed
Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
Emily Vance Brown 