Middle spoon

In this searching epistolary narrative from Varela (The Town of Babylon), a married middle-aged gay man tries to move on from an ex-boyfriend who wasn't prepared for polyamory. The unnamed narrator, 43, a public health researcher raising two young children in Brooklyn with his husband, remains stuck on Ben, an attractive 30-something who took him to trendy parties and spiced up his sex life. When they met, Ben claimed he could handle sharing the narrator with his husband and children, but after a few months, Ben broke it off, realizing he wanted more. To cope, the narrator writes but doesn't send a series of emails to Ben, which, along with other scattered missives, comprise the novel. Among the subjects explored are the narrator's academic field, which he entered out of a hope to "make the world better"; unfortunately, the musings on public health add little to the story. Much better are the narrator's descriptions of everyday routines as he attempts to forge a love life on his own terms and be a good dad. While riding the subway with his eight-year-old child, Jules, who is nonbinary, he responds boldly to a man's taunts over Jules's gender-nonconforming outfit: "Why do you care what my kid wears?" It's a refreshingly candid tale of modern love. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Sept.)

A married man in an open relationship grieves his first breakup. National Book Award finalist Varela's new novel is told primarily through letters from an unnamed narrator to his former boyfriend. At the behest of one of his therapists, he begins drafting the emails in an effort to navigate their sudden breakup. The narrator, who has never felt heartbreak before, is left entirely unmoored and devastated. The novel's seemingly straightforward conceit begins to shift as the rest of the narrator's life comes into focus: He is happily married to his husband, has two children (one of whom is nonbinary), lives in Brooklyn, has an active social life, and works as a public health researcher and professor. Until recently, he was also in a polyamorous relationship with Ben, who likewise lives in Brooklyn and is nearly a decade younger. A whirlwind romance that deepened quickly into love, their relationship was great until the moment Ben dumped the narrator unceremoniously. Nearly swallowed by grief, he fills his overwhelmingly vulnerable letters with sorrow, pining, obsessive thoughts, anxiety, tangents, gay history, therapy speak, pop-culture diatribes, and everything in between. In one of the earliest emails, the narrator posits: "Maybe there's something worthwhile in unorthodox relationships and atypical family structures. Maybe the world should adapt to us and not us to it." Brushing up against social norms, the narrator dreams of a world that is not quite ready for them. In one letter, he remembers the half-serious joke his husband made about him wearing a T-shirt that says "My husband knows I'm cheating on him." In another, he writes to his son about the bittersweet reality of being pioneers: "Those of us perched on the tips of branches have unique viewpoints of the forest." The novel explores the beautiful complexity of unorthodox, progressive family dynamics with tenderness and humor in equal measure. A touching yet provocative queer love story about defying societal expectations. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.