Let's get back to the party : a novel

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Title:

Let's get back to the party : a novel

Author:

Salih, Zak, 1982- author.

ISBN:

9781616209575

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

278 pages ; 24 cm.

Subject Term:

High school teachers -- Fiction.

Gay men -- Fiction.

Friendship -- Fiction.

Self-realization -- Fiction.

Gay culture -- Fiction.

Same-sex marriage -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Washington (D.C.) -- Fiction.

Summary:

It's just weeks after the historic Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, and all Sebastian Mote wants is to settle down. A high school art history teacher, newly single and desperately lonely, he envies his queer students their freedom to live openly the youth he lost to fear and shame. So when he runs into his childhood friend Oscar Burnham at a wedding in Washington, D.C., he can't help but see it as a second chance. Now thirty-five, the men haven't seen each other in a decade. But Oscar has no interest in their shared history. Instead, he's outraged by what he sees as the death of gay culture: bars overrun with bachelorette parties; friends getting married, having babies. While Oscar and Sebastian struggle to find their place in a rapidly changing world, each is drawn into a cross-generational friendship that treads the line between envy and obsession: Sebastian with one of his students and Oscar with an older icon of the AIDS era. And as they collide again and again, both men must come to reckon not just with one another, but with themselves. --

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake)	FICTION SAL	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Park Grove Library (Cottage Grove)	FICTION SAL	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	FICTION SAL	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	FICTION SAL	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

A Most-Anticipated Book of 2021: BuzzFeed * The Millions * Cosmopolitan * Electric Literature * LGBTQ Read s * Paperback Paris

One of Advocate 's "22 LGBTQ+ Books You Absolutely Need to Read This Year"

"An intimate saga that brims with necessary conversations about cultural identity." -- O, The Oprah Magazine, "32 LGBTQ Books That Will Change the Literary Landscape in 2021"

It is 2015, weeks after the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, and all Sebastian Mote wants is to settle down. A high school art history teacher, newly single and desperately lonely, he envies his queer students their freedom to live openly the youth he lost to fear and shame.

When he runs into his childhood friend Oscar Burnham at a wedding in Washington, D.C., he can't help but see it as a second chance. Now thirty-five, the men haven't seen each other in more than a decade. But Oscar has no interest in their shared history, nor in the sense of belonging Sebastian craves. Instead, he's outraged by what he sees as the death of gay culture: bars overrun with bachelorette parties, friends coupling off and having babies. For Oscar, conformity isn't peace, it's surrender.

While Oscar and Sebastian struggle to find their place in a rapidly changing world, each is drawn into a cross-generational friendship that treads the line between envy and obsession: Sebastian with one of his students, Oscar with an older icon of the AIDS era. And as they collide again and again, both men must reckon not just with one another but with themselves.

Provocative, moving, and rich with sharply drawn characters, Let's Get Back to the Party introduces an exciting and contemporary new talent.

Author Notes

Zak Salih lives in Washington, D.C. His writing has appeared in Crazyhorse , the Chattahoochee Review , the Millions , the Rumpus , and other publications. This is his first novel.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

The shifting landscape for gay men in America animates Salih's heartfelt debut. In 2015, with gay marriage protected by the Supreme Court, 30-something Virginia high school art teacher Sebastian Mote wouldn't mind a life of domesticity, but he's just broken up with his boyfriend of three years. After the suicide of a gay student, Sebastian devotes himself to his students, especially 17-year-old Arthur, whose open sexuality Sebastian secretly envies while he works to make the school more LGBTQ inclusive. Sebastian hopes that luck has finally favored him when, at a wedding, he bumps into Oscar Burnham, a friend from childhood. But Oscar laments the end of a hedonistic lifestyle and complains that every gay man he knows is "a victim of marriage fever now." The closest Oscar comes to the life he pines for is in his friendship with Sean Stokes, an author in his 60s famous for books that document the abandon of previous decades. There's a varied cast, though many of the support players come across as generic: an uncle disapproving of him expressing his gay identity, the loving but conflicted mother, and so on. But Sebastian's and Oscar's twinned dilemmas add fascinating complexity to the goings on. The party may be changing, but reasons for celebration remain, as evidenced by Salih's passionate evocation. (Feb.)

Kirkus Review

Two childhood friends reconnect in their 30s with life-changing consequences. It's the summer of 2015, a year before the massacre of 49 people at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. Sebastian Mote is a high school art history teacher in a suburb of Washington, D.C., reeling from the end of a three-year relationship. He wants to take advantage of the Supreme Court's recent marriage equality verdict; some children and a house in the suburbs with raised flower beds would be great, too. His childhood friend Oscar Burnham is a "proud queer" who can't fathom why any gay man would want to settle for marriage like a "breeder." One night at a gay bar, he confronts a woman who's part of a bachelorette party after she condescendingly says, "God, I love my gays," aggressively shaming her into leaving. Sebastian and Oscar narrate alternating chapters of the novel. After they run into each other in D.C., Oscar thinks a visit to Sebastian's house makes him feel "like [he's] stumbled into a diorama in a natural history museum labeled Homo americanus domesticus." There's a deep tension between the two that's sexual but also political: Neither can entirely stomach the life the other has chosen. But to Salih's credit, the narrators' personalities don't fall into tidy moral demarcations; Sebastian, who isn't adventurous, dangerously pines for one of his 17-year-old students, and Oscar, who has a robust sex life, might just want a steady relationship if he'd admit that to himself. An insightful examination of two of the many ways gay men present themselves in contemporary America. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

Set in 2015, after the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States, this poignant and poetic debut novel brings together Sebastian and Oscar, two long-lost friends who have a chance meeting at a wedding, as they sort out their conflicting views on relationships, settling down, and, ultimately, what it means to be queer. Sebastian, an introspective high-school teacher who is still reeling from the recent end of a three-year relationship, develops an obsessive friendship with a student, while Oscar, who has no interest in long-term relationships, meets an older queer writer whose work fuels his own party-and-sex-filled desires. Though Sebastian and Oscar's perspectives sometimes lack nuance and are at points hard to empathize with, in their juxtaposition readers will find a compelling exploration of the experiences of queer people from different generations as two modern-day gay men figure out whether they want to conform to traditional views of relationships and marriage or break free entirely.

Library Journal Review

In the year preceding the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre, estranged childhood friends Oscar and Sebastian meet as adults in Washington, DC. In alternating chapters, Oscar decries the death of queer culture and high school teacher Sebastian marvels at a student who is totally comfortable with being out and proud. A debuter seen in the Millions, the Rumpus, and more.

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Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

Booklist Review

Library Journal Review

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