A psychosexual relationship between a rabbi and the man devoted to him goes off the rails in the first novel from Wayne Koestenbaum in nearly twenty years.
The most convincing depiction of romance I’ve read in years ... Koestenbaum sustains his urgency over the course of 450 pages because he’s an unbeatable stylist with a track record of dilating small moments of observation into wide swaths of philosophy and psychology ... Comical, unhinged ... Grapples with a subject rarely discussed in fiction with such frankness and agility.
An operatic novel that is more daytime soap than Verdi ... One can’t deny that this is inventive—and mannered. The narration is sly and knowing, the story of uncovering, revealing. And the end almost redeems the extravagant performance.
The novel sprawls, rejoicing in its narrative that burrows and fractures like separate paths in an ant farm, absurd spectacles and dreamlike revelations ... Koestenbaum’s overwhelming attention to detail through his winding sentences results sometimes in headache, but most often they shine with brilliance.
