Fall/Winter books; Cher, Edmund White, DeSimone & more

FICTION
'Our Evenings' by Alan Hollinghurst, $32 (Random House)
Booker Prize-winning novelist Alan Hollinghurst's seventh novel is a fictional memoir of David Win, a Burmese actor in his seventies, who still laments the passing of philanthropist Mark Hadlow who passed at the age of 94, and who funded a large portion of David's education in the 1960s.

The decades of David's life generously spread across the pages of this striking novel as he overcomes homophobic bullying at school (and at the hands of Mark's son, Giles) and years of frustrating typecasting as an actor of color. His loving relationships, however, with family and friends, lend a certain sweetness and adoration to the narrative, which is densely evocative but written with lush phrasing and seamless sentences.

Searing, emotional, elegantly heartfelt and simply gorgeous, Hollinghurst brings to vivid life characters whose paths have crossed, their life directions thereafter diverged, only to reunite (if only through savored memories) surrounded by life's joys and sorrows. This is a delight.

'Private Rites' by Julia Armfield, $27.99 (Flatiron Books)
After her eloquently menacing debut story of undersea transformation in 2022's "Our Wives Under the Sea," Julia Armfield returns with the immersive, climate-change-apocalypse story of three queer sisters who must make amends and struggle to survive after the death of their father.

Isla, Irene, and Agnes are the estranged daughters of Stephen Carmichael, a curmudgeonly if infamous architect who constructed habitable structures specifically designed for use underwater. Once sea waters engulfed their city, it is doomed to exist partially underwater, and the sisters must navigate their way to see their father one last time. With nary a sunny sky in sight, Armfield amps up the dread and the planet-in-peril theme to great success and a second novel worth diving into.

'Exit Wounds' by Lewis DeSimone, $21.95 (Rebel Satori Press)
Mining the sensitive topics of aging, culture decline, and the tentativeness and precariousness of modern gay life, novelist and former San Franciscan Lewis DeSimone's latest book chronicles Craig Amundsen, a gay San Francisco man who wrestles with living life in the big city with a cruel demographic that seemed to be skewing younger and younger.

DeSimone taps into the reality of life in the Bay Area with its regal real estate market, tech obsession, ever-widening generational disparities, and a self-absorbed atmosphere that makes his protagonist feel even more isolated amidst a recent break up and a job with a shaky shelf life.

As one particularly jaded character laments on gay life in the Castro: "It's the culture that's dying...men our age belong in the suburbs."

With just the right combination of realistic dialogue, barbed criticisms, dark humor, and engrossing plot and narration, DeSimone has, as he has with his former books, hit the sweet spot in this immersive tale of aging gay men, the pains and pleasures of jury duty, and the myriad ways in which queers coexist, attempt to stay sane, retain happiness, and, against a barrage of barriers, thrive. This is a seamless, impressively written love letter to San Francisco and the vibrant, colorful tapestry of communities which make it tick.

'Entitlement' by Rumaan Alam, $30 (Riverhead)
Queer author and father Rumaan Alam's novel "Leave the World Behind," and its cinematic adaptation, were both immense successes and set the anticipation level for this new novel immediately into motion.

This time the author focuses on wealth, power, deservedness, envy, identity and appropriation in his tale of 30-ish Black New Yorker Brooke Orr who gives up a fulfilling teaching job for the opportunity to be an assistant for an arts foundation. The foundation is established by elder billionaire Asher Jaffee as a way to funnel his estate toward the greater good of the art world.

But too much time spent in Asher's elite world of privilege, wealth, and unlimited fortune curdles Brooke's good nature and turns her into a monster seeking what she feels is somehow owed to her and a nefarious plot to buy a Manhattan apartment that is way above her means. While a slow-burn type of novel, it's addictive and watching Brooke turn from do-gooder teacher into an entitled sneak will have the pages turning. Grab this one!

'Please Come to Boston' by Gary Goldstein, $17.99 (Hadleigh House)
Television, film, and theater writer Gary Goldstein's new novel, his third, is a beautiful study in character development as it traces the lives and identities of two Boston University students Nicky and Joe who fall in love. The plot expands outward to include Lori, who ultimately falls for both Nicky and Joe, who, in turn, love her right back in the best polyamorous way possible things can flow in the 1970s.

While this bisexual intercourse is uplifting and provocative for its time, Goldstein acknowledges that setting is key as well. Modern technology, as we know it today, is blissfully absent from the narrative. Without the benefit of cell phones, texting, Alexa, Facebook, X, Instagram, driverless taxis, or AI-assisted internet searches, the story lends itself to numerous bracingly honest and earnest in-person conversations which will be refreshing for any type of reader, queer or otherwise.

Shot through with themes of self-exploration, sexuality, and the search for authenticity, Goldstein excels at tapping into the anxieties of gay life in the mid-1970s, the longing for acceptance, and the electric, if taboo, first stirrings of same-sex attraction. Goldstein has produced a well-written, character driven, beautiful take on college life and the gloriously interwoven trappings of sexual attraction and relationships. Don't miss it!

MEMOIR
'The Loves of My Life: A Sex Memoir' by Edmund White, $27.99 (Bloomsbury)
Now in his 80s, Edmund White's decorated literary career becomes even more provocative and irreverent with this new memoir cataloging decades of formative erotic encounters across the span of an exuberant lifetime. His partners range from Cincinnati "hillbilly" hustlers enjoyed as a teenager in the 1950s all the way to a summer spent with Pedro, a smolderingly sexy Spanish Ecuadorian man White met online.

There are even some females whom the author got naked with, though they were mostly used as failed curative attempts to gauge his heterosexual attainability. There's a lot more steamy encounters inside but also introspective, reflective notes on gay history and the evolution of gay attitudes across time. Blunt, raunchy, explicit, nostalgic, and unapologetically sex-forward, this memoir will excite, enchant, delight, and, perhaps most of all, make the reader truly appreciate everything that is Edmund White.

'Cher: The Memoir, Part One' by Cher, $31 (Dey Street/HarperCollins)
The first half of the iconic diva's life lavishly fills nearly 500 pages of this revealing and intimate celebrity memoir. In conversational prose decorated with the defiant attitude, the brazen honesty and resiliency that can only come from Cher, the book moves through her early years living with a cash-strapped family, her rise to fame on the musical circuit, and the dive into feature films.

This inaugural volume, however, stops just short of her Oscar win for "Moonstruck" in 1988. Easily the best parts of the book involve people other than the star. Among them are Cher's mother, Georgia Holt, a woman who married six times (twice to Cher's father), her adoration for Val Kilmer, relationships with David Geffen, Gregg Allman, Kiss bassist and co-lead singer Gene Simmons, and of course, Sonny Bono, with whom the singer began what would become a loving but contentious and enduring relationship at the tender age of 16.

This is only the first part; the memoir's second volume is still forthcoming. Cher fans, get yourself to a local bookstore. This one's unforgettable.

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