Salem, Massachusetts, 1851: McGlue is in the hold, still too drunk to be sure of name or situation or orientation—he may have killed a man. That man may have been his best friend. Intolerable memory accompanies sobriety. A-sail on the high seas of literary tradition, Ottessa Moshfegh gives us a nasty heartless blackguard on a knife-sharp voyage through the fogs of recollection.
They said I've done something wrong? . . . And they've just left me down here to starve. They'll see this inanition and be so damned they'll fall to my feet and pass up hot cross buns slathered in fresh butter and beg I forgive them. All of them . . . : the entire world one by one. Like a good priest I'll pat their heads and nod. I'll dunk my skull into a barrel of gin.
In the fall of 1940, with the world at war, a young man arrives at Oxford to study engineering, though his sights are already set on joining the Royal Air Force as a pilot. Handsome, charismatic, a powerful athlete and oarsman, David Sparsholt seems at first unaware of the effect he has on others--especially on the lonely and romantic Evert Dax, son of a celebrated novelist, himself also destined to become a writer. While the Blitz rages in London, Oxford exists at a strange remove from the action: a place of transience and uncertainty, the fears and rigors of the blackout both encouraging and concealing unexpected liaisons. Between these two young men of very different backgrounds an unusual friendship develops, one whose consequences will unfold over the many years that follow.
PAST SELECTIONS
2025
Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice
A Single Man, Isherwood
The Immoralist, Gide
In Tongues, Grattan
Confessions of a Mask, Mishima
2023
Saint Sebastian’s Abyss, Hager
Necessary Errors, Crain
City and the Pillar, Vidal
Dancer from the Dance, Holleran
Song of Achilles, Miller
Giovanni’s Room, Baldwin
Line of Beauty, Hollinghurst
Tops Bottoms and Sidepockets, Robin Versage
This Boy’s Life, White
Swimming in the Dark, Jedrowski
2022
Brideshead Revisited, Waugh
Memoirs of Hadrian, Yourcenar
MacArthur Park, Durban
Book of Salt, Truong
Boy Culture, Rettenmund