PositiveThe New York Times Book Review...happily, this busy, headlong narrative is not forced by its author; the propulsion driving it is one into which he seems pulled, drawn by whatever it was that engineered the collective crest-then-crash course of idealistic seekers and misfits between 1967 and 1976. Drugs, for one thing ... Remarkably, his beatific innocence remains intact, as does the lightheartedness of the narration. If The Light Years can seem haphazard or uncurated, scribbling hitchhiking routes back and forth across the map, what it sacrifices in reflection on Chris’s experience it makes up for in reflection of the culture ... what’s fresh and interesting about The Light Years is its account of gay survivalism ... The rare thing the book offers is a nearly documentary collection of gay and genderqueer kids, and their situations, in the early 1970s.
Kiese Laymon
RaveBookforum\"It’s an astounding journey, not least for the ways it duplicates [Laymon’s] mother’s. Duplicates and complicates ... When at a certain point there is no more of the man to reduce, the narrative rushes brilliantly to its dismaying apotheosis...\
