In Tongues

March 11, 2024
“Would there ever be a time where the biggest thing in my life wasn’t difficulty?” wonders the young gay narrator of this impressive sophomore novel from Grattan (The Recent East). Soon after Gordon moves to New York City in summer 2001, his self-pity lifts when he starts working for an older gay couple, art dealers Philip and Nicola, first as their dog walker and then as their personal assistant (“Being needed a drug I couldn’t turn down”). However, Gordon gives in to some reckless impulses—he kisses Nicola, takes clothes from both men without asking, and throws a party in their home while they’re away. He also falls for Pavel, an aloof but charming painter, and grapples with his troubled relationship with his disapproving father, who’s recovering from a heart attack. While Gordon attempts to explain his self-destructive tendencies (“Giving up felt good”) it is with the friendship that develops between Gordon and Philip—first during a trip to Europe, where they watch the 9/11 attack on TV, and later when they briefly live together—that Grattan elicits the most emotion. In the author’s skilled hands, Gordon’s bad judgment and sentimental education make for terrific reading. Agent: Jody Kahn, Brandt & Hochman Literary.

April 15, 2024
A breakup with his boyfriend sends narrator Gordon and his few belongings to the bus station, where he purchases a one-way ticket from Minneapolis to the first place he thinks of, New York City. After a desultory spell living above a garage and working at the grocery across the street, Gordon meets tough, tattooed bartender Janice, a soulmate friend who soon becomes his roommate and chosen family. Janice's girlfriend hooks Gordon up with a dog-walking job, which introduces him to Philip and his partner, Nicola, gallery owners of unfathomable wealth and good taste. Outwardly, Gordon lives like a man with no past or future, but readers learn all the ways that isn't true: the troubled love among his small, split-up family; the precise foreignness of his new surroundings from his beyond-modest upbringing; the agony he feels at knowing what to say or do in most situations. Grattan (The Recent East, 2021) shrewdly lets readers grow with Gordon. He unselfconsciously obsesses over the signs of Philip's 70 years, but more slowly realizes his obsession with his own youth, with being seen and seeing himself. In this fine, affecting novel, Grattan's subtle, true portrayals and sharp dialogue make a highly enjoyable read even more so.

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April 15, 2024
A young gay man grows from a life of "reckless impulses" into a reflective adult in this affecting novel. Queer fiction is studded with vaguely amoral, menacing protagonists, characters who know they're bad and relish it, tossing right back at the world the anomie thrust at them just for being queer. Gordon is 24, raised in Minneapolis by working-class parents who don't like each other. It's 2001, before the 9/11 attacks, when he lights out for New York City after having been dumped by his boyfriend--with the help of $200 he stole from said boyfriend. Eventually, he finds work as a dog walker for wealthy art gallery owners Philip and Nicola. They soon ask him to become their personal assistant; that's when Grattan lets loose his piercing observations of how the rich exercise their power. Nicola is catty and resentful of Gordon's presence while Philip, patrician and aloof, is kinder. Gordon has a lot to learn in order to maneuver the intricacies of their refined lives--until he makes a mistake that will sever the deep relationship among the three of them. Impish and careless for much of the novel, Gordon grows into someone whose badness diminishes, though his memory of it still pricks like a thorn in his side. It was a wise choice to have Gordon narrate the novel, and he has a memorable voice: funny, dark, and eventually chastened. The novel builds on the self-involved, sometimes cruel protagonists of Edmund White's early work, though Gordon learns to rein himself in instead of committing more mayhem. This story of a miscreant who grows up will stick with you long after the last page.

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