SOS Book Log #7
May’s book round-up. (Also, hi, I’m alive.)
Hi, friends,
I know it’s been more than a minute since my last missive, but I’m back! I’ve been spending the last few weeks traveling and working on some projects that have occupied most of my time and energy, but I’m feeling good about the work I’ve been doing since my last newsletter, and I look forward to sharing all of it with you when the time is right!
In the meantime, here are some recent reads that I feel compelled to share with you because they absolutely SLAP. I hope you take a minute to check them out and give these authors some love, otherwise I’ll be forced to take turns living inside their walls and eerily cheering them on from within.
Spare them that less-than-desirable fate and buy their books!
***
Brother & Sister Enter the Forest by Richard Mirabella
If a book is categorized as queer coming-of-age, I am on it like Someone Remarkably Younger and Cooler Than Me is on a new Telfar drop. This is the beauty of these stories: They’re all different, complicated, and wonderfully messy. It’s an overflowing well, immune to ever running dry—and we are lucky to have this book included as a palpable presence amongst these stories that enrich our lives.
In this debut novel by soon-to-be literary powerhouse Richard Mirabella, we meet Justin, who arrives on his sister’s doorstep after years of absent communication, in need of a place to stay as after his home has collapsed. His sister, Willa, is reluctant at first, worried that chaos will closely follow if she opens her home—and heart—to him. She’d always been quick to protect her brother, especially when they were growing up. But, in high school, when Justin’s slightly older, violent boyfriend had committed a horrifying act of violence, the two had fled town on a road trip that irrevocably damaged Justin and his family forever. Years later, as he’s trying to connect with the people in Willa’s life—her boyfriend, her landlord, their overbearing mother with whom they both have a fraught relationship—Willa struggles to reconcile the limits of her love for her brother with the steady life she’s made for herself. As Justin spirals out of control, struggling with sobriety and the sustained effects of a brain injury, brother and sister once again find themselves testing the elasticity of their orbit around one another.
By weaving together two timelines, Mirabella delivers a powerful reckoning with past trauma and finding connection amidst it all. We are left with the reminder that we move through this world in response to the choices we make, and that we’re always one choice away from finding a way out of the thickets we’re lost in.
Tweakerworld by Jason Yamas
I’m not someone who likes to tour things. I’m not going to come to your city and go on a walking tour of a historic distillery; I’m going to try your local selection of chicken fingers and tell you if they’re as good as you say they are. But I will encourage you to take a tour of Tweakerworld by Jason Yamas.
Within weeks of moving to Berkeley after things fall apart for him in Los Angeles, Yamas quickly finds himself pulled into the San Francisco ParTy n’ Play (PnP) scene. His longtime addiction to Adderall extends to include the harder stuff, like the relaxant gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB), and before long, Yamas becomes embroiled in a world of drug-fueled, round-the-clock sex parties, criminals, and a colorful cast of characters who pull back the curtain on any preconceived notions we may harbor of the stereotypical tweaker. Drawing from his background as a New York University-educated multimedia producer, Yamas becomes a dealer under the guise of research for a project he hopes will tether him back to a normal life. Soon, by virtue of demand and a hearty entrepreneurial spirit, Yamas becomes one of San Francisco’s top drug dealers, his reputation rippling through a network of clients and rival dealers alike. As his friends and family try to sway him toward the road to recovery, he resists it in pursuit of an illusion that can only be broken by confronting that which continues to get in his way, and the only means by which he can find salvation: himself.
I’m beyond blown away by Yamas’s storytelling skills. The mastery he has over tension—building it, releasing it, sometimes doing both at the same time—is best described as cinematic, a testament to the prowess of the other roles he inhabits outside of being a writer as a director, producer, and actor. His ability to amalgamate them through memoir with charm and humor results in a striking, yet tender, portrayal of a world that’s often relegated to the shadows, now illuminated by this author’s rising star.
The Survivalists by Kashana Cauley
Not to toot my own horn, but I possess the uncanny ability of being able to tell who has a helluva book in them. I’ve been a fan of Kashana Cauley for years—her hilarious Tweets are more effective at keeping me going than the strongest of cold brews—so when she announced her debut novel, I rejoiced, while giving myself a smug look in the mirror. Called it again!
In The Survivalists, Aretha, a young and ambitious Black lawyer, meets and falls for Aaron, the founder of a local coffee company and the owner of a charming Brooklyn brownstone. Aretha is not only drawn to Aaron’s sunny disposition, but also finds in him a fellow member of the, as she calls it, “dead parents club.” Things are moving swiftly and smoothly, until, of course, the proverbial other shoe drops—except in this case it’s two shoes in the forms of James and Brittany, Aaron’s gun-stockpiling, doomsday-prepping roommates. Aretha’s skepticism of the pair begins when she discovers the array of guns they own, and the metal bunker in the backyard that they’ve filled with various survivalist gear. Ambivalent at best, Aretha decides to move in with Aaron and his conspiracy-driven roomies, the siren call of living rent-free and not returning to a dating app louder than the doubts abuzz in her mind. As her law career starts to flounder, and with Aaron constantly away on bean-sourcing trips abroad, Aretha is seduced into James and Brittany’s lawless world, eventually joining them on various trips to buy illegal guns they later sell. Soon, she discovers herself free from the self-imposed inhibitions that have subjugated most of her adult life. What’s cleverly produced is a sociopolitical inquiry into where self-preservation ends, and where self-destruction begins.
Cauley’s penetrating wit catapults this book beyond the questions it asks us, delving deep into today’s global anxieties, all while layering levity in all the right places. To say this novel packs a punch is imprecise; it is electric. Each copy is a streak of lighting captured in Cauley’s bottle.
I’m Never Fine by Joseph Lezza
If you don’t know Joseph Lezza yet, you fucking will. Mark my words. I’ve made it my personal mission to spread the gospel of this book; I even bullied him into sending the title chapter to Longreads, which you can read here.
I’m Never Fine is a tenderly crafted, deeply moving memoir and treasure trove of hilarious one-liners (“I drive the point home, mostly because the point is drunk”) that navigates the tempestuous time in Lezza’s life leading up to and following the death of his father from pancreatic cancer. But it would be an oversight to just call this a grief memoir—the connective tissue of this book stems beyond the universal feeling of loss; it asks us to recalibrate our approach to hardship and healing, with heart and humor to boot. Lezza explores the non-linear nature of grief—quite literally depicted by his experimentation with form; there are essays, poems, vignettes, zigs where you think he would zag, and vice versa—by subtly rejecting the Western proclivity to categorize it and produce a step-by-step guide to try and outwit the trickster that it is. But Lezza doesn’t try to outwit it; instead, he turns inward, and traces his steps backward in order to move forward.
In the end, we are left with the lesson that loss is sometimes more about what you gain.
The In-Betweens by Davon Loeb
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it—to quote the title of one of my favorite episodes of Buffy—once more, with feeling: Small press books have always been—and will always be—THAT bitch. If you aren’t populating your TBR with at least a few small press titles, you aren’t as well-read as you could be. I said what I said! (Where TF is the gavel emoji????)
This gift of a book follows the son of a Black mother and a white, Jewish man from Long Island as he tries to find himself within the context of his heritage and identity. Growing up in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey as one of the few non-white children in his neighborhood, Loeb, despite his best efforts to fit in, is constantly singled out—inside and outside the classroom. As a boy, he’s at constant odds with himself—feeling too Black one day, and not Black enough the next—all while trying to achieve the feeling every child strives for: to be included. Yet, despite trying to embody the traits traditionally associated with boyhood—strong, sporty, emotionally impervious—he discovers that he is not like the company he tries to keep. He’s gentle, a reader, a dreamer—soft. And while he feels these qualities restrict him as a boy, they are what connect him to the world around him as a man.
This memoir is labeled as lyrical—each piece stands alone, which gives this story a unique and intimate depth. Reading this book is almost like looking at a spread of Polaroids in front of you, and, when arranged together, form the remarkable portrait of a resonant storyteller.
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Yours,
Greg
Credits
Art by: James Jeffers
Editorial assistant: Jesse Adele
You can follow my other unhinged missives by following me on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. My debut memoir, Born to Be Public, is out now.