Books

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Book Review: ‘Heart Trouble’ by Jae

 Two people meet under unexpected circumstances—and Heart Trouble abounds. Hope Finlay, ER doctor, has kept people at arm’s length since losing her mother and entering the foster care system at the age of eight. Hope is a loner, preferring to work nights and holiday shifts, sleeping and keeping to herself during the day. Occasionally, she chooses to come out into the daylight and play a game of racquetball with her friend, Jordan, another doctor at Griffith Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles. Laleh Samadi keeps a long line of men at bay. They are the ones her Persian parents parade before […]

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Children’s Book Review: ‘Princess Princess Ever After’ by Katie O’Neill

Princess Princess Ever After is a warm-hearted graphic novel centered on the adventures of two strong-willed princesses. Playful in tone, this colorfully illustrated story was originally published as an online comic, but was later picked up by Oni Press for hardcover release. The story begins when Princess Amira rescues another Princess, Princess Sadie, from an archetypal tower. The two use some creative problem solving skills to make their way past the typical fantasy novel obstacles of ogres and evil sisters. Through the arc of the story, both characters learn to recognize their self-worth, their different strengths, and to appreciate each other. […]

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Book Review: ‘Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983’ by Tim Lawrence

While unearthing the cultural crossroads that formed the foundation of the Mudd Club and so many vital venues, Tim Lawrence absolutely nails what early the 80s New York City club scene was all about: “The venue was helping establish the foundations for a renaissance marked by convergence and exploration.” That’s right. Renaissance. Disco didn’t die–it shattered into a thousand mirror ball fragments that refracted artistic innovation, new technologies, emerging modes of self-expression, from punk to new wave, to rap and dance music. In a shockingly brief period of time, New York City was the center of an artistic universe in […]

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Book Review: ‘A Thin Bright Line’ by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

Is it possible for a novel to both break your heart and to heal it? Lucy Jane Bledsoe was named after her aunt Lucybelle Bledsoe who died when the author was six-years-old. She knew her aunt had left the family farm and moved to Greenwich Village, was intellectually brilliant, had never married, and, in 1966, died in a fire. There were also blurred family memories of a companion named Vera. Bledsoe took these snippets of knowledge and went on an odyssey of discovery where uncovered facts about her aunt’s life, the backdrops of the Cold War and Civil Rights Movement, […]

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Book Review: ‘They May Not Mean To, But They Do’ by Cathleen Schine

Cathleen Schine’s They May Not Mean To, But They Do is a novel about reasonably pleasant people to whom nothing much happens except time, in all its ordinariness and brutality. That starts off as a weakness but, by the book’s end, turns into its core strength. Given the Philip Larkin epigram that also lends the book its title (They fuck you up, your mum and dad. / They may not mean to, but they do), one might arrive expecting a somewhat darker look at family dynamics. In truth, nobody in this story of two octogenarians and their offspring—as devoted New […]

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Attention Writer! Call for submissions: Gay Bar Anthology

  The days and nights following the massacre at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida, we listened as various spokespersons attempted to explain to the general public exactly what the gay bar/club meant to LGBTQI people. We heard the words “safe place,” “refuge,” “free to be ourselves.” Some of us posted pain-filled messages on the social networks. Others took the time to remember past experiences and write about them. Lee Lynch’s blog, “Freedom Clothes,” pried open memories I’d forged in gay clubs in Philadelphia and its suburbs. My recollections and Lee’s forced the door open a bit further and jump-started […]

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Book Review: ‘Jazz Moon’ by Joe Okonkwo

In his debut novel, Joe Okonkwo composes a melodic tale that is as arousing and jarring as one might imagine the roaring jazz era of 1920’s Harlem. Jazz Moon, (Kensington Books), affords the reader a seat in any smoky speakeasy of that period, high on gin and jazz, enticed by the discord of the south and change; enraptured by the crescendo of New York City, art and love; compelled by the resonance of Paris and race. Jazz Moon, in part, is a love story. The beautiful complicated love story of main character Ben Charles, a burgeoning poet from the south who […]

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Book Review: ‘Radiance’ by Emanuel Xavier

Today, one can walk down to the Christopher Street pier, look out at that water shimmering, and find the walkways populous with so many ghosts—teenage hustlers, homeless youth, drag queens, defiant survivors no longer in the fight—who now only exist for many of us, moving like afterimages through these baby strollers, these bikes, the bodies of leisurely joggers—because Emanuel Xavier, song by song, through his several collections, so devotedly conjures them for us: “Us who created / something from nothing to make it appealing / for those who own everything” (“Gentrification”). Or rather, with his new collection Radiance, he invokes […]

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Book Review: ‘Black Wave’ by Michelle Tea

What if the world had ended in 1999? How would the story of your life have changed? In Michelle Tea’s newest book, Black Wave, this is the case: as 1999 progresses, the state of the declining world moves rapidly toward decimation. The narrator, Michelle—a hard-partying, drink and drug-loving, San Franciscan lesbian writer—decides it’s time to get out of dodge, and announces her plan to move to Los Angeles. Her friends don’t believe her, but Michelle lives up to her promise—after a few more binges and a few more kisses— convincing a lover to rent a U-haul and drive her south. […]

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Book Review: ‘Tom House: Tom of Finland in Los Angeles’ Edited by Michael Reynolds

A man has a look on his face that screams trouble. He wants something from you. He wants you to take your clothes off. He wants you naked. His clothes barely fit. They’re skin-tight and his thickly drawn muscles burst out of every opening. Even the shading is sexy. The man wears leather and, with hands much larger than his face, reaches over to touch you. It’s not like he wants to buy you a drink, he wants to be the drink. Outside the window, more men. Further away, more still. The streets are brimming with them, and beyond are […]

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