I found a lot to really like in this book. I thought that the characters were exceptionally well-drawn, even people who are secondary to the plot. It was easy to feel like I knew them and cared for them. Lefferts is really good at writing about people.
This is gay literature. It has a lot of passages about sex, how it relates to power dynamics, lots of philosophizing about how homosexuality exists within capitalism. The conclusions it points to probably aren’t what you’re expecting, and I found them pretty thought-provoking. It’s pretty graphic, in the sexual scenes, so take that into account if that’s a thing for you, good or bad.
The story drifts between coming-of-age to romance, mystery, and political thriller genres. Early on, it’s kind of a timeless story about people, and it becomes more grounded in its time period as it goes on: the book ends around 2017 and includes a handful of real people as far-away characters in the plotline, including Donald Trump. I didn’t like this as much as the rest, but maybe for personal reasons. Anything grafted onto our perverse modern political culture just gets degraded for me, even if it’s well-written.
But the rest is so thoroughly quality that it didn’t ding the book that much for me.
As a sidenote: Lefferts has an impressive vocabulary or a well-worn thesaurus because this also contained a lot of new-to-me terms. Here are some of my highlights: