02.16.2021 LET'S GET BACK TO THE PARTY By Zak Salih

Let’s Get Back to the Party

By Zak Salih

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Publication Date: February 16, 2021

Hardcover / 288 pages / $25.95

www.Algonquin.com

It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to Zak Salih and his fierce and evocative debut LET’S GET BACK TO THE PARTY (Publication Date: February 16, 2021; $25.95).

Framed by two of the most significant events in recent LGBTQ history—the Supreme Court’s 2015 marriage equality ruling and the devastating 2016 massacre at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub—LET’S GET BACK TO THE PARTY examines queer culture, generational envy, and the search for belonging through the lens of two childhood friends who reconnect as adults. While Sebastian yearns for a heteronormative life with a partner and a family, and Oscar clings to a romanticized version of the hedonism that preceded him, both search for their place in a rapidly changing world.

“LET’S GET BACK TO THE PARTY is a miracle of a book,” says Nick White, author of How to Survive a Summer and Sweet & Low. “A love letter to queer friendship and queer love in a particular moment in time that also, in its sparkling prose and exquisite storytelling, announces the arrival of a major talent.”

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, he envies his queer students their freedom to live openly, as his own youth was 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 over a decade, but Oscar has no interest in their shared history. Instead, he’s too outraged by what he sees as the death of his culture: gay bars overrun with bachelorette parties; men getting married and having babies. Each is drawn into a cross-generational friendship that treads the line between envy and obsession: Sebastian with an openly gay student who has the luxury of holding his boyfriend’s hand in the school hallways, and Oscar with an iconic gay novelist whose life and work represent a fading era. As Sebastian and Oscar reckon with a tension equal parts sexual and political, they must also struggle with what it means to be a gay man today. 

  Born too early to have enjoyed the comforts of an “out” adolescence and too late to have any first-hand experiences of the AIDS pandemic, Zak Salih, whose writing has appeared in Crazyhorse, the Chattahoochee Review, the Millions, and the Rumpus, among others, has “spent a lot of time thinking about my community—and where I fit in. While this novel is by no means a roman à clef, I wanted to fictionalize the complexities of what it’s like to belong to this ‘lost generation’ of gay men, and to explore what it means to ‘be’ (and how to ‘be’) queer. I often think the two overarching emotions for many queer people, regrettably, are either rage or sadness. I wanted to see how these potentially self-destructive emotions shaped the way Sebastian and Oscar dealt with broader cultural changes and their own personal histories.” 

  “With an artist’s eye for beauty and an art historian’s for detail, Zak Salih excavates the lives of his characters and leaves no stone unturned to ask questions about what it means to be a queer individual, to be a queer community, to be queer alone and with others,” says Matt Ortile, author of The Groom Will Keep His Name. “A book for those of us who simultaneously adore and abhor the pains and ecstasies of social closeness—which is to say it’s a book for us now, us all.”

“The shifting landscape for gay men in America animates Salih’s heartfelt debut… The party may be changing, but reasons for celebration remain, as evidenced by Salih’s passionate evocation.”

—Publishers Weekly

“There’s a deep tension between [Sebastian and Oscar] 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… An insightful examination of two of the many ways gay men present themselves in contemporary America.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“A gorgeous, raw, tender, trenchant novel… At once gimlet-eyed and generous to his wonderfully drawn characters, Salih paints a vivid portrait of the paradoxes of queer life in contemporary America…This is a stellar debut from a huge talent.”

—Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State

“A miracle of a book: a love letter to queer friendship and queer love in a particular moment in time that also, in its sparkling prose and exquisite storytelling, announces the arrival of a major talent.”

—Nick White, author of How to Survive a Summer and Sweet & Low

MY REVIEW:

What a fantastic read I enjoyed! 

I found this story fascinating as Salih used the historical references about the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling as the basis and jumping off point of the story. This novel explores the identity of two gay men in our current society. Salih did a great job of painting a story about what lies between being closeted and then now being completely accepted, with the increased visibility in every part of our lives and in almost all cultures as well. 

The writing of these two very different characters between Oscar and Sebastian, the readers learn about the struggles of not only these two gay men, but also what the LGBTQ community have been struggling with for many years. I found the writing impressive for a debut novel and found it compelling enough to be the thought provoking read I really appreciated. 

I really enjoyed reading about the differing point of views on how they see themselves as adults and their gay cultural identity in this contemporary setting. I really enjoyed this one and please do check this out especially if you have enjoyed the novels of Rebecca Makkai and Claire Messud. 

Thank you to Algonquin Books for my copy, and opinions are my own.

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

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.