MixedVultureMore polished and assured than his previous work ... as though it put on a clean shirt and good shoes before guests arrived ... Purnell’s observations are at once lyrical and familiar, like a perfect joke dropped into a group text or whispered into a lover’s ear. While Purnell’s sensibility is queercore, his writing follows the oft-unacknowledged literary subgenre of cruising — a more contemporary, gay variant of flânerie: the men who wander for dick, from Jean Genet to David Wojnarowicz to Samuel R. Delany. The public square winks with possibility. Gas stations become libidinal pump-and-dumps. Bathrooms, bathhouses, truck stops, theaters, warehouses, and docks peel back to reveal entire erotic ecosystems structured around giving and getting orgasms ... the belief is that public sex reorganizes the world in a way that allows for a radical reconception of desire ... Sex doesn’t have to mean anything, but novels should and it’s not clear what 100 Boyfriends amounts to in the aggregate. The paragraph-long snippets begin to feel repetitive. They blur together, as casual sex is wont to do.