The expression of LGBTQ+ identity can shift—through coming out, building community, and partnering or in response to changing political or cultural landscapes. In these three novels, LGBTQ+ characters explore, in the words of one reviewer, “the raptures and dangers” of being queer at home and abroad.
Sean Eads’ novel Confessions, which considers character, love, and family, takes place in a small Appalachian town. Confessions follows several residents, including several gay characters (one closeted), as they try to manage their complicated lives and connections where everyone knows too much about everyone else’s business. The nonlinear tale, which unfolds in the form of a memoir-turned-letter,is “an adept and heart-wrenching rural drama with devastating LGBTQ+ themes,” according to our review.
Desire Lines, Cary Alan Johnson’s Kirkus-starred novel set in New York City during the AIDS crisis, stars a Black gay man who “explores the raptures and dangers of his complicated identity” and ventures into forbidden places. Our reviewer says, “The precision and honesty of Johnson’s writing bring an immediacy and universality to a narrative that is firmly anchored in its historical time and its particular set of marginalized identities.”
A bisexual Armenian American writer visits her homeland in Nancy Agabian’s The Fear of Large and Small Nations. Via “fragmented narratives, journal entries, blog posts, and meta passages,” the novel illustrates the ways travel and the return home can spur self-transformation. Says our reviewer: “This is a courageously fragmented approach to storytelling that depicts a valiant search for self-understanding while challenging traditional gender roles, discrimination, and homophobia. Beautifully textured writing in a compelling tale that ponders identity and belonging.”
Karen Schechner is the president of Kirkus Indie.
