The state of queer fiction is miserable. Fewer and fewer queer titles are being published. And those that are published don’t sell, because they aren’t very good. It is not the intention of this blog to dwell on the negative. This webiste is a sincere attempt to seek out quality queer literature wherever it is. Keeping this in mind, let us take a moment to rejoice.
Andrew Holleran’s Grief is now in paperback.
I suspect that many of you have been waiting for this. Not just for the retail price to drop to $12.00. Not just for this slim volume to be available in that much more handy format–fits so easily into the beach bag. You’ve been waiting for the critical dust to settle–so you could determine if it really was in a league with Mr. Holleran’s great American queer novel, Dancer from the Dance.
Well, I am happy to report that it is. The quality of the writing in Grief is at least as good as in Dancer from the Dance. And Grief goes deeper. This short novel asks an open question: What is grief? Is it a finite condition, from which one must inevitably recover–an emotional flesh wound? Or is it something much more profound–an almost-mystical presence of the departed? “…grief is what we have after someone dies,” Mr. Holleran’s unnamed narrator states. “It’s the only thing left of that person.”
Mr. Holleran doesn’t propose to answer this open question. And the main character’s accidental discovery of the diaries of Mary Todd Lincoln doesn’t foreshadow a new age happy ending. (There will be no workbook to accompany this text.) But Grief is always interesting–sometimes in surprising ways. The injection of United States history is both organic and entertaining.
Andrew Holleran’s newest novel is only 150 pages long. You might find yourself reading it in one sitting. Or you might find yourself stretching it out to two or three readings. It’s hard to finish it–hard to say goodbye to it. But that’s what Grief is all about, right?