BOOKS
REVIEWS BY GRAEME AITKEN AND HENDRI YULIUS WIJAYA
HOT SUMMER READS Wondering what to read over the break? Here’s our summer picks, and the boys’ Best Of ’21 for your consideration. BATH HAUS
By PJ Vernon (Doubleday) With his long-term boyfriend is out of town, Oliver visits a sauna for some anonymous sex. Instead of sex, the handsome stranger he goes into a private room with almost strangles him. He escapes by gouging his attacker’s cheek with his locker key. With his neck marked by violent bruises, Oliver finds himself caught in a web of lies as he tries to hide his infidelity from his partner. Meanwhile, his attacker has tracked Oliver’s partner down and is intent on terrorising him… This first-rate thriller is the perfect summer page-turner with almost every chapter delivering a new twist. – Graeme
Tender and compassionate, Saenz also pushes racial issues to the fore, making this resonate with contemporary times. – Hendri AFTERPARTIES: STORIES
By Anthony Veasna So (Grove Press) The tragic backstory to this captivating collection is that the author didn’t live to see it published. Anthony Veasna So died in December 2020 at the age of just 28. It’s rare to see fiction from a gay Cambodian-American writer and once upon a time this would have been dismissed as too niche, especially a book of short stories as opposed to a novel. So it’s gratifying that more diverse voices are being published and, what’s more, proving very successful.
PANDEMONIUM
By Andrew Mcmillan (Jonathan Cape) Award-winning poet Andrew Macmillan traverses pain, suffering, trauma and depression. Raw yet tender, his new poems move from the sex and physicality that he explores in the previous collections, to living minds and hearts to figure out what redemption might mean for us. – Hendri
ARISTOTLE AND DANTE DIVE INTO THE WATERS OF THE WORLD
By Benjamin Alire Saenz (Simon & Schuster) In this sequel to the popular young adult novel, Aristotle And Dante Discover The Secrets Of The Universe, Dante and Ari are growing up gay during the devastating AIDS era in the 1980s. With support from their parents and friends, they declare their relationship and together face the world that cruelly challenges their existence. 56 DNA
Set in Central Valley, California, the stories illuminate the lives of immigrants and their children, shadowed by the country they have abandoned. Fans of Bryan Washington’s highly acclaimed collection Lot will find many similarities here. – Graeme 100 BOYFRIENDS
By Brontez Purnell (MCD x FSG Originals) Witty, foulmouthed and feral, 100 Boyfriends chronicles fragments of sexual encounters between the narrator and other men. From lunch breaks, offices and online dating platforms to bars, Purnell reveals the dysfunctional sides of gay life while exploring the many possibilities we can carve out and make from our own flaws. – Hendri
