Synopses & Reviews
“It’s safe to say your relationship is in trouble if the only way you can imagine solving your problems is by borrowing a time machine.” In 2006 comic book dealer John Sherkston has decided to break up with his physicist boyfriend, Taylor Esgard, on the very day Taylor announces he’s finally perfected a time machine for the U.S government. John travels back to 1986, where he encounters “Junior,” his younger, more innocent self. When Junior starts to flirt, John wonders how to reveal his identity: “I’m you, only with less hair and problems you can’t imagine.” He also meets up with the younger Taylor, and this unlikely trio teams up to plot a course around their future relationship troubles, prevent John’s sister from making a tragic decision, and stop George W. Bush from becoming president. In this wickedly comic, cross-country, time-bending journey, John confronts his own—and the nation’s—blunders, learning that a second chance at changing things for the better also brings new opportunities to screw them up. Through edgy humor, time travel, and droll one-liners, Bob Smith examines family dysfunction, suicide, New York City, and recent American history while effortlessly blending domestic comedy with science fiction. Part acidic political satire, part wild comedy, and part poignant social scrutiny, Remembrance of Things I Forgot is an uproarious adventure filled with sharp observations about our recent past.
InSight Out Book Club, featured selection
Bob Smith named one of Instinct magazine’s Leading Men 2011Winner, Barbara Gittings Literature Award/Stonewall Book Awards, American Library Association
Finalist, Over the Rainbow Selection, American Library Association
Finalist, Green Carnation Prize, international prize for LGBT Literature
Amazon Top Ten Gay & Lesbian Books of 2011
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Reviewers
Review
'“Magruder is a writer of immense gifts, with a voice—smart, playful, lyrical, subtle, unsparing—utterly unlike anyone else’s.”—Tony Kushner, playwright of Angels in America -- PEN American Center'
Review
“If H. G. Wells had been funny and Oscar Wilde obsessed with time travel they might have mated and produced Bob Smith, who has written the funniest and wildest ride imaginable through the recent past and near future.”—Edmund White
Review
“His characters are brilliantly drawn, the dialogue is Preston Sturges deft, the political satire is damning without being shrill, and you will absolutely cry when you read the last line. How did Smith do that? I didn’t think it was possible to be a bigger fan of Bob Smith’s than I already was, but I am.”—David Rakoff, author of Fraud
Review
“An extraordinary novel: smart, funny, fiendishly inventive, often moving and ultimately profound. I've never read anything like it. Bob Smith combines the ingenuity of science fiction with the emotional weight of autobiographical fiction. He then adds politics—in the form of the greatest villain of recent American history. This is a comic novel, but reading it can be a life-altering experience, like falling through a rabbit hole in space/time, and coming out the other side a better person.” —Christopher Bram, author of Gods and Monsters
Review
"Wildly comic political satire mixes with cutting comedy, social commentary, and a touch of sf in this seriously entertaining summer read."—Booklist
Review
“Bob Smith’s Remembrance of Things I Forgot is a delightful, moving portrait of a man who is given the rare opportunity to literally revisit his past, and the novel will likely be considered one of the year’s best.”— Christopher Verleger, Lambda Literary
Review
“A beautifully written and well-paced comic sci-fi extravaganza, a true page turner yet pregnant with deep social and human insight. . . . Take this book to heart: it will absorb you, change you, and—in the clincher of the last sentence—move you to tears.”—Richard Canning, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide
Review
“It is abundantly clear that Smith mixed the funny with the sad in Remembrances of Things I Forgot, and he has literally turned that ‘genre of life’ into a tangible reflection of the time it takes for humans to forget their life experiences, big and small, sweet and sorrowful; and in the end how remembrance of all things could actually change the world.”—Tony Hobday, QSaltLake
Review
“Bob Smith aims high and succeeds.”—Band of Thebes
Review
“If, as Marshall McLuhan once taught us, the medium is the message, then Derfner’s medium—this lovely, discursive amalgamation of wit and smarts—is indeed his message about how to stay happy, sane, and honest in whatever situation one finds oneself in.”—Philip Gambone, author of Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans
Review
“Moving seamlessly from the personal to the historical to the political, Joel Derfner meditates with wit, insight, and even-handedness on the realities of marriage—his and everyone’s. His story is not only deftly placed in the context of the broader fight for marriage equality, but is also a powerful tool in that fight. Mainly because it’s so funny.”—David Javerbaum, former head writer for The Daily Show
Review
“Derfner is an engaging storyteller, and while his sense of humor is ever-present, he never lets it diminish or undermine his discussions of the book’s more serious subjects. This is a book that is more about reality than reality television.”—
Lambda LiteraryReview
“[Derfner’s] observations about the implications of [two weddings] are infused with the perfect mix of serious scholarship, self-effacing humor, and humility.”—
Huffington PostReview
“A searingly honest portrait of love under fire, a fearless exploration of what it means to be an adult, a couple, a family. It is a story for our time.”—Jennifer Haigh, author of Faith
Review
“So many different relationships are put to the test in Michael Lowenthal’s thought-provoking novel—not only the bond at the heart of the book between two gay men and the Brazilian woman acting as their surrogate mother, but also the bond between husbands and wives, between siblings, between aging parents and their adult children. The Paternity Test is a complex, emotionally satisfying, and thoroughly engaging story.”—Tom Perrotta, author of The Leftovers and Little Children
Review
“A good, old-fashioned page-turner and a sophisticated look at the mysteries of long-term love and the convoluted reasons for wanting a child. Lowenthal writes with intelligence and passion and made me care a great deal about the fates of his flawed, fascinating characters.”—Stephen McCauley, author of Insignificant Others
Review
“Michael Lowenthal’s new novel deftly and wisely explores the various ways families are formed, altered, and destroyed by charting the vagaries and exigencies of two marriages. I loved the complicated, compelling characters all of whom come vividly alive in the beautifully evoked Cape Cod setting.
The Paternity Test is a riveting and wonderful book.”—Peter Cameron, author of
Coral Glynn and
Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to YouReview
“The Paternity Test is an exuberant book—a feat, considering how thoroughly Michael Lowenthal ransacks the human condition for its enduring weaknesses and inevitable disappointments. Yet he manages this with such warmth and wit, bringing to his disparate, often clashing band of characters so much compassionate intelligence, that in the end we can’t help rooting for each one to find happiness—even as we come away with a clearer perception of how rightly varied their different versions of happiness may be.”—Leah Hager Cohen, author of The Grief of Others
Review
“It’s a page-turner thanks to its realistic characters and a situation that might hit close to home for some.”—
The AdvocateReview
“Never in a hurry,
The Paternity Test starts out at a slow and gentle trot but works up to [a] brisk pace and, in time, to a can’t-look-away ending that will leave readers feeling both shaken and pensive.”—
The Gay and Lesbian ReviewReview
“This is an enjoyable, thoughtful look at marriage, wrapped in wry humor with a few eyebrow-raisers to make things interesting. If you’re a softie for a boy-meets-boy story, a lover of how-we-met tales, a twitterpated romantic, you’ll want it now. For you,
Lawfully Wedded Husband will be a nice surprise.”—
LGBT WeeklyReview
“This collection of interviews with gay activists and artists is like going to dinner with people you’d love to know but don’t, and Phil Gambone is the perfect stand-in for the reader: impressively prepared, sympathetic, and smart.”—Andrew Holleran, author of Grief: A Novel
Review
“By asking good questions and really listening, Philip Gambone opens an illuminating window into the minds, hearts, and guts of a fabulous array of extraordinary Americans. At this critical time in America’s decades-long movement toward LGBTQ equality, you really shouldn’t miss this view.”—Will Fellows, author of Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest
Review
"Gambone is a smart interviewer with a laid-back, engaging style, and he knows how to bring out the most interesting qualities of his subjects. He clearly admires them all and makes us admire them, too. . . . An eclectic front-to-back reading experience."—Library Journal
Review
“This collection of rainbow-hued recollections is a must-read for anyone curious about other people's coming out experiences and the complex struggles that brought them to where they are today.”—Bay Area Reporter
Review
“Gambone traveled the country for two years to bring the stories of gay artists, activists, and everyday queer folk to light through interviews that are candid, honest, and down-to-earth; his thoughtfully crafted questions, deep and respectful listening, and masterful storytelling skills highlight what gay America has in common with straight America, and what it is that makes the LGBTQ community decidedly different. . . . Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans is an engaging, moving, entertaining, and informative introduction to and affirmation of LGBTQ citizens who, in spite of the injustice, fear, inequality, and intolerance that they face on a daily basis, manage to create lives filled with passion, color, creativity, and service.”—ForeWord
Review
“Reading Philip Gambone’s new book of profiles, Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans, is like watching a really good, really gay Barbara Walters Most Fascinating People special. Gambone delivers his subjects’ backstories, where they are now, a sense of what makes them tick, and sometimes, just like Walters, he gets tears. . . . Though Gambone’s writing is vivid, compassionate, and concise, what really comes across in Travels is how easy he is to talk to. ”—Advocate
Review
“A thread of activism and universal accounts of coming out run through all the entries, but what really sparkles is the individuality of the interviewees.”—Pride Source
Review
“Whether famous or relatively unknown, the portraits Gambone unveils in Travels in a Gay Nation move, surprise, quite often inspire, and are always deeply human.”—The Boston Spirit
Synopsis
It s safe to say your relationship is in trouble if the only way you can imagine solving your problems is by borrowing a time machine.
In 2006 comic book dealer John Sherkston has decided to break up with his physicist boyfriend, Taylor Esgard, on the very day Taylor announces he s finally perfected a time machine for the U.S government. John travels back to 1986, where he encounters Junior, his younger, more innocent self. When Junior starts to flirt, John wonders how to reveal his identity: I m you, only with less hair and problems you can t imagine. He also meets up with the younger Taylor, and this unlikely trio teams up to plot a course around their future relationship troubles, prevent John s sister from making a tragic decision, and stop George W. Bush from becoming president. In this wickedly comic, cross-country, time-bending journey, John confronts his own and the nation s blunders, learning that a second chance at changing things for the better also brings new opportunities to screw them up. Through edgy humor, time travel, and droll one-liners, Bob Smith examines family dysfunction, suicide, New York City, and recent American history while effortlessly blending domestic comedy with science fiction. Part acidic political satire, part wild comedy, and part poignant social scrutiny,
Remembrance of Things I Forgot is an uproarious adventure filled with sharp observations about our recent past.
InSight Out Book Club, featured selection
Bob Smith named one of Instinct magazine s Leading Men 2011
Winner, Barbara Gittings Literature Award/Stonewall Book Awards, American Library Association
Finalist, Over the Rainbow Selection, American Library Association
Finalist, Green Carnation Prize, international prize for LGBT Literature
Amazon Top Ten Gay & Lesbian Books of 2011
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the American Association of School Librarians
Best Books for General Audiences, selected by the Public Library Reviewers
"
Synopsis
A casebook of interpretations of the ballad The Walled-Up Wife. Some contributors offer competing nationalistic claims concerning the ballad's origins, Ruth Mandel examines gender and power issues in the ballad, and Lyubomira Parpulova-Gribble presents a structuralist interpretation.
Synopsis
James Magruder’s Sugarless offers a ruefully entertaining take on the simultaneous struggles of coming-out, coming-of-age, and coming-to-Jesus.
Synopsis
Things look bad for Rick Lahrem, a high school sophomore in a cookie-cutter Chicago suburb in 1976. His mother’s second husband is a licensed psychologist who eats like an ape, his stepsister is a stoner slut, and his father is engaged to a Southern belle. Rick’s only solace is his growing collection of original Broadway-cast LPs, bought on the sly at Wax Trax.
After he brings two girls in speech class to tears by reading a story aloud, Rick is coaxed onto the interscholastic forensics team to perform an eight-minute dramatic interpretation of The Boys in the Band, the controversial sixties play about homosexuality. Unexpectedly successful at this oddball event, Rick begins winning tournaments and making friends with his teammates.
Rick also discovers the joys of sex—with a speech coach from a rival school—just as his mother, reacting to a deteriorating home environment, makes an unnerving commitment to Christ. The newly confident Rick assumes this too shall pass—until the combined forces of family, sex, and faith threaten to undo him at the state meet in Peoria.
James Magruder’s Sugarless offers a ruefully entertaining take on the simultaneous struggles of coming-out, coming-of-age, and coming-to-Jesus. A selection of InsightOut Book Club
Finalist, Lambda Book Award for Gay Debut Fiction, Lambda Literary Foundation
Finalist, TLA Gaybie Award for Best Gay Fiction
Semi-finalist, James Branch Cabell First Novelist Award, Virginia Commonwealth University
Semi-finalist, William Saroyan International Prize For Writing, Stanford University
Synopsis
After his brilliant scientist boyfriend invents time travel and becomes a fervent Republican, John Sherkston is transported back to 1986, where he tries to save the life of his sister, save the country, and possibly save his relationship. Remembrance of Things I Forgot is a brilliant, satirical, poignant, and comic adventure.
Synopsis
When Joel Derfner's boyfriend proposed to him, there was nowhere in America the two could legally marry. That changed quickly, however, and before long the two were on what they expected to be a rollicking journey to married bliss. What they didn't realize was that, along the way, they would confront not just the dilemmas every couple faces on the way to the altar—what kind of ceremony would they have? what would they wear? did they have to invite Great Aunt Sophie?—but also questions about what a relationship can and can't do, the definition of marriage, and, ultimately, what makes a family. Add to the mix a reality show whose director forces them to keep signing and notarizing applications for a wedding license until the cameraman gets a shot she likes; a family marriage history that includes adulterers, arms smugglers, and poisoners; and discussions of civil rights, Sophocles, racism, grammar, and homemade Ouija boards—coupled with Derfner's gift for getting in his own way—and what results is a story not just of gay marriage and the American family but of what it means to be human.
Synopsis
Having a baby to save a marriage—it’s the oldest of clichés. But what if the marriage at risk is a gay one, and having a baby involves a surrogate mother?
Pat Faunce is a faltering romantic, a former poetry major who now writes textbooks. A decade into his relationship with Stu, an airline pilot from a fraught Jewish family, he fears he’s losing Stu to other men—and losing himself in their “no rules” arrangement. Yearning for a baby and a deeper commitment, he pressures Stu to move from Manhattan to Cape Cod, to the cottage where Pat spent boyhood summers.
As they struggle to adjust to their new life, they enlist a surrogate: Debora, a charismatic Brazilian immigrant, married to Danny, an American carpenter. Gradually, Pat and Debora bond, drawn together by the logistics of getting pregnant and away from their spouses. Pat gets caught between loyalties—to Stu and his family, to Debora, to his own potent desires—and wonders: is he fit to be a father?
In one of the first novels to explore the experience of gay men seeking a child through surrogacy, Michael Lowenthal writes passionately about marriages and mistakes, loyalty and betrayal, and about how our drive to create families can complicate the ones we already have. The Paternity Test is a provocative look at the new “family values.”
Synopsis
For two years, Philip Gambone traveled the length and breadth of the United States, talking candidly with LGBTQ people about their lives. In addition to interviews from David Sedaris, George Takei, Barney Frank, and Tammy Baldwin,
Travels in a Gay Nation brings us lesser-known voices—a retired Naval officer, a transgender scholar and “drag king,” a Princeton philosopher, two opera sopranos who happen to be lovers, an indie rock musician, the founder of a gay frat house, and a pair of Vermont garden designers.
In this age when contemporary gay America is still coming under attack, Gambone captures the humanity of each individual. For some, their identity as a sexual minority is crucial to their life’s work; for others, it has been less so, perhaps even irrelevant. But, whether splashy or quiet, center-stage or behind the scenes, Gambone’s subjects have managed—despite facing ignorance, fear, hatred, intolerance, injustice, violence, ridicule, or just plain indifference—to construct passionate, inspiring lives.
Finalist, Foreword Magazine’s Anthology of the Year
Outstanding Book in the High School Category, selected by the American Association of School Libraries
Best Book in Special Interest Category, selected by the Public Library Association
About the Author
'“A remarkable debut. At once tender and satirical, Magruder illuminates the secret heart of every character, from the sixteen-year-old narrator who worships Broadway show tunes to the Christian girl who wears a live Peruvian cockroach pinned to her blouse.”—Richard McCann, author of
Mother of Sorrows “
Sugarless is the rough chutes and ladders of adolescence against a realistic and hilarious evocation of the 1970s. If you ever wondered what makes boys tick, or you’ve been in danger of forgetting, this is the book you’ve been looking for.”—Amy Bloom, author of
Away“The tale of adolescent sexual awakening in James Magruder’s Sugarless reads so true it feels like it should be thrust into the hands of every confused protogay teenager.”—Out Magazine
"In this fascinating 1970s coming-of-age story, playwright and translator Magruder introduces readers to Rick Lahrem, a high school sophomore struggling with his sexuality, his loneliness and his new stepfamily. His only solace is the Broadway LPs he buys at the local record store, but when he\'s coaxed into joining his school\'s speech team, he finally discovers something he\'s successful at and a group of friends who actually seem to care about him. Then one day, while record shopping, he meets Ned Bolang, a speech coach from a rival high school, and a sexual affair ensues just as Rick\'s mother is finding Christ, an irony not lost on the reader. Rick and Ned\'s relationship is nuanced and complicated: Rick views Ned as the one person who can make him happy, but is the older Ned exploiting his young lover? While this novel may be about a homosexual relationship in the 1970s, the story captures the struggles of teenagers, straight and gay, of every generation."—Publishers Weekly
“With fine attention to detail and a resounding feel of truth James Magruder explores the burgeoning sexuality of a teenage boy in the Midwest bible belt coming to terms with his homosexuality.”—The Washington Times'
Table of Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Dorothy Allison
Kwame Anthony Appiah
Tammy Baldwin
Christopher Barnhill
Alison Bechdel
Mandy Carter
Jennifer Chrisler
Beth Clayton and Patricia Racette
Kate Clinton
Judy Dlugacz
Arthur Dong
Mark Doty
Zoe Dunning
Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd
Lillian Faderman
Barney Frank
Malik Gillani and Jamil Khoury
Hillary Goodridge
Judith (Jack) Halberstam
Kim Crawford Harvie
Scott Heim and Michael Lowenthal
Jennifer Higdon
Frank Kameny
Randall Kenan
Sharon Kleinbaum
Andrew Lam
Joan Larkin
Stephin Merritt
Greg Millett
P. J. Raval
Gene Robinson
Richard Rodriguez
David Sedaris
Carl Siciliano
Dean Spade
George Takei
Rachel Tiven
Urvashi Vaid
Modesto "Tico" Valle
Russell van Kraayenburg