4.5 Stars I enjoyed the characters in this novel and the way that they felt real and lived in. The relationships between all the characters also felt uniquely fleshed out. There were a few lines of poignant observation but mostly this book felt like the telling of a life that could've existed. I mean this as a compliment to the author and the novel, many times queer stories feel like they have to be big or say too much. This story was able to just be this story and I think the novel is stronger for it.

I am in awe of this book, this author, this type of writing. Just finished this and I’m in tears. This was absolutely incredible and I’m so grateful for the opportunity to read this ARC. This is so quintessentially MY type of book: pure character study with little to no plot, but tons of introspection. And what a fascinating and unique character Gordon was. A wonderful wonderful wonderful book I’ll talk about for a long time and will recommend to my community over and over again. It moved me so much and it will stay with me. I’m in love. ❤️

Such a solid take on a slice of life kind of story. The characters were not remarkable or extraordinary but they were honest, and I loved getting to follow along through their lives together. A good read for anyone who enjoys a good look at the everyday for someone other than themselves.

“One of the benefits of aging, I suppose, is to know that most feelings aren’t permanent fixtures.”

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

It's a slice-of-life book, so the plot takes a backseat, but it was still such a pageturner, I finished it in a single day and it wasn't just because of the short length. The writing style is wonderful and there were so many moments in the book where I found myself pausing just to take in the words. Set in 2000s New York, it captures the energy of the city well, from the life that Gordon lives with his best friend, Janice, as a broke young man to the lives of a gay couple, Philip and Nicola, who own an art gallery.

I love reading character-based novels and this book was filled with so many compelling characters, including the protagonist. The book is told from Gordon's point of view, so we get to see what's going on in his head when he does things that others find inexplicable. He's described as someone without ambition, yet, he does take action and unlike some similar books I've read, there was growth. I do wish we got to see more of that within the book itself, but you do see the seeds of change in him even though it might seem like he remains the directionless young man he was at the end of the book as he was in the beginning when he impulsively runs from Minnesota to New York City after breaking up with his boyfriend.

Thank you Thomas Grattan, Farrar, Straus and Giroux | MCD, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

When twenty-something Gordon gets to the train station at the start of the novel he doesn’t know he will end up in NYC. He doesn’t know he will move in with Janice, his best friend who truly loves him, he doesn’t know he will end up working for Phillip and Nicola, two rich gay gallery directors, and he doesn’t know if his next decision will make his life better or worse. This is the story about a muse.

Both passive and impulsive, Gordon seems to mostly exist in the prescription of others.

Although Gordon serves as the inspiration for many characters in the book, I found it difficult to pierce through his center and wonder what his feelings were. He is sometimes described as angry, or crying, but I never felt truly connected to him. In a way I feel like that’s how the rest of the characters in the book felt. He was interesting and intriguing, but I could never access his depth, and I think that is by design. However, one thing was clear, he wanted to be wanted. This seems to come from the abandonment from both of his parents thought out his life. Gordon recreates patterns and cycles, follows where life takes him, and starts up again. As Gordon flows though life, so does the writing. The author, Thomas Gratton tactfully executed an appropriate pacing for a novel with a character that is so lost, I never felt out of bounds. At the end of the book I still found myself rooting for Gordon, we don’t always know what we want, but we can be happy with what we have.

Thank you to Farrar, Straus & Giron’s and NetGally for the ARC!

a tender portrayal of the queer coming of age experience, trying to find yourself and your place in the world. Set against a NYC backdrop in the early 2000s. the storytelling was daydreamy, meandering, no plot just vibes.

Gays being gay in New York. Amazing.

We follow Gordon, a young gay man, who is starting over in the big city during the early 2000’s. We travel alongside him in his day to day, sexcapades, found family, drama, slice of life.
He becomes a dog walker for an affluent older couple, Phillip and Nicola. This job turns into even more and he spends most of his time with this couple. He meets their friends, poses for a painter and falls in love, travels around the world, witnesses 9/11, graces us with witty dialogue and humor. Lots of sex, parties, uncertainty, love and lust. While Gordon is trying to find himself through the thick of everything, he is receiving emails from his very religious father and having to decipher that relationship and what it means to him. Gordon is very traumatized by the things he has been through, but is sassy and fun despite it all. He is not afraid to live his life, and to take the chances that are presented to him.
This is a really special book. It’s slow, deep, and touches on so many important topics. Every character is real with their own flaws and story, and touches Gordon in a specific way. I have read nothing like it. The last chapter… I have never been more close to crying while reading a book ever. I’m so sad that’s it’s over.
Oh, and Janice and Phillip deserve the world.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher who provided me with an ebook copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All of these thoughts and opinions are my own.

A really interesting read! I knew I would be into this one as soon as I saw the cover. I will share more of my thoughts once I collect them.

I tried really hard to get into this one, but I just wasn't able to. I am still really thankful to the publisher, author, and netgalley for granting me advanced access to this digital collection before publication day.

Real Rating: 4.5* of five

I kept making dirty wordplay on this title as my review's first line. Trouble with that is nothing I can come (!) up (!) with is steamier or hornier than the book itself is.

This is NOT straight-people safe. This is not, in all honesty, a book to read at work, or on public transport, unless you're wearing very, very loosely pleated trousers. Or baiting your hook.

It's also not one-handed reading, I hasten to add. The story is very much the point of the sexual situations, not the other way around. Think of it as Ripley made for PornHub not Netflix, nor perish forbid that neutered but pretty-to-look-at theatrical film. That perhaps overplays the calculation and manipulation that Gordon commits to in achieving his goal of finding himself (between two powerful people's bodies), and discovering his true inner self(ish bastard). But make no mistake that Gordon is very much a Young Man from the Provinces who very clearly knows what he left behind he deliberately rejected. Now he needs to understand how to work his natural gifts while he's got youth and a complete absence of the will to say "no" on his side.

The reason I resonated so deep(!)ly to the story is Author Grattan's way of making it: Episodic, dreamlike, in the flow. That knocked off the meaner interpretations I leapt to about Gordon's thoughtlessness, his lack of a core concern for how his behavior might affect others. It is not yet in him (!) to be calculating. It is, in other words, a case of his being canny versus being savvy. Gordon instinctively responds to the way others see him and shows them that side. A savvy operator would, instead move to seduce those who have what he wants. Those people are often false-feeling and mistrusted, Gordon is too real in his desire to be desired to give off a warning signal, a fake vibe.

Absence of an organizing principle often gets mistaken for aimlessness. Author Grattan takes on a daunting task of presenting the story of Gordon, void of course, and needing thus to use authorial sleight of hand to keep his reader from feeling lost and unconnected the way Gordon is. That is a supremely difficult thing to do. For the most part I think his choice of sexual contexts serves admirably to ground and connect us to Gordon. There's so much pleasure in reading the elegant prose of the story, and so much about the emotional nature of those around Gordon to keep a lit-fic reader going. Particularly telling is Gordon's relations with the old guys in the story. He might not lust after them as they do him, but he desires...something, some meaningful intangible benefit to go with the tangible exchanges between them; does he get it? He doesn't know, because he doesn't know what he's looking for, The older men get what they want though likely not what they need, which is again intangible: connection. A future. Raising more than a flagging half-staff, shall we say.

This is consonant with my own life.

My half-star docked off dissatisfaction was Gordon's religious father begging for his son's withdrawn love. That's not so baldly expressed, of course, as I've done but it honestly does not ring true at all. Religious fathers with gay sons imght want to convert them to straightness but making themselves emotionally vulnerable? Nope. I don't, honestly, see that happening between most any father and son. And that joined a certain vague sense I could never coalesce around an actual idea, that Gordon was not really interested in himself enough to attract the caliber of men he does. That's as close as I can come to articulating a kind-of Forrest Gumpishness about him that did not jibe with narrative.

Lovely writing made the ending work. Lesser talent would've fumbled that one, and it was a close-run thing even so. A book I recommend to gay-male readers of literary prose.

All others, at your own risk.

4 ⭐️. oooo I love reading about messy characters and these characters did not disappoint! this book took me back to the early aughts to relieve the art world and queer community of NYC. The writing style was poignant and left me enthralled, tugging at my heart stings at times and making me audibly gasp at others.

ty to NetGalley & Farrar/Strauss/Giroux for an Advance Reading Copy in exchange for an honest review.

Slice of life story about a young gay man growing up and finding himself. He moves to NYC from the Midwest in the late 90s/early 2000s and lands himself a job as a personal assistant to a couple of rich older gay men. This book was heartbreaking at times and also a wild, steamy ride. The writing and story telling hooked me and I couldn’t put it down.

This author has easily become one of my favourite current writers. The characters were so well worked out, everything about this novel makes it an instant recommendation for me.

Thank You NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux (MCD) for an early copy of this wonderful novel.

I love this book! I found Grattan's debut pretty good, but he levels up with this sophomore effort. It reminds me quite a bit of Batuman's THE IDIOT, trading early university life for the playful, gay, and chaotic streets of NYC. I had so much fun reading this, which is ironic because of how sad this book gets throughout. Grattan somehow got me smiling at the page and on the verge of tears, sometimes in the same chapter. His control of character and dialogue are spot on. A remarkable novel, sometimes a bit silly in a soap opera kind of way, but wildly entertaining nonetheless.

It comes of May 21st (this Tuesday!) and I hugely recommend reading it, particularly if you're a fan of Batuman or other authors of "millennial fiction."

Fresh out of a breakup in early 2001, 24 year old Gordon wanders onto a bus and finds himself travelling to New York, as that is one of the few places accepting of gay men such as himself. With no sense of direction or career plans, he accepts a dog walking job offered by a new acquaintance. Gordon begins walking dogs for rich clientele throughout Manhattan, rubbing elbows with the elite. But it isn't until he meets Phillip and Nicola, an older gay couple, that he becomes fully adopted into the world of money and opulence.

This is very much a no plot just vibes book. There were sections of this I really liked, but also sections I felt dragged or was wanting more out of. This has great commentary on social class, family, wealth, etc. If you are into literary fiction, this would be a great read to add to your list!

This is a book that I loved and made me skip pages as the storytelling can change quite dramatically and there's some parts which are more a sort of manifesto.
I want to read other books by this author because I'm usually all-or-nothing and this was a bit-of-everything.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

When a young gay man moves from the Midwest to New York City on a whim, he has no plan, no end goal, and no idea what waits for him in the next year of his life. In his new novel, Thomas Grattan captures this most uncertain moment with exacting precision, taking his protagonist on an uneven journey through those fraught early stages of being an adult. As he struggles with saying what he wants, understanding the subtext of social situations, and generally being out of his depth, we get a sharply relatable queer coming of age story that kept me turning page after page.

An anticipated release that fell extraordinarily flat to me, unfortunately. In Tongues captures the listless and transient nature of NYC in your early 20s, which is already a niche well-explored in literary fiction. Combined with a very apolitical lens of gay culture in the late 90s, one-dimensional characters, and a meandering plot, this just didn’t catch my attention.

As a protagonist Gordon had no sense of identity for me - his passive nature and lack of ambition make it difficult for him to emerge from the wide cast of secondary characters with any discernible traits. He wanders from one opportunity to the next and has no real sense of loyalty, which makes him fairly unlikeable. I don’t dislike unlikeable narrators, but he didn’t feel like one I understood or found myself intrigued by.

The writing feels timid and cautious like it’s trying to appease everyone by only going halfway with most storylines. It kept pivoting between disjoint story arcs that added little to the narrative, and the result was a book that lacked identity. Every character has the same voice and perspective, and the storytelling lacks a sense of cohesion. I also loathed the ending.

Overall, I appreciate slice-of-life literary fiction but this felt very average and forgettable. Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux
and NetGalley for the ARC!

I didn't quite know what to make of this. A slice of queer life in the early 2000s? Maybe, a counterpoint to the striving, ambition, and relentless hard work we're told make up the American dream.

Gordon is a drifter. He's also an observer. Not that he often acts on what he sees.

After a difficult homelife elsewhere, Gordon arrives in New York. He moves on from his initial dead-end job to walking dogs - something gifted him by his only friends in the city. From there, he drifts into only walking the dogs belonging for a queer couple in the art trade and from there, he sort of becomes a homehelp for them. Sort of part of their relationship as well. And the politicking.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, it ends badly. Gordon once again is left drifting, trying to milk other relationships he hasn't bothered to maintain.

I found him an unlikeable character. Not actively bad, ,just someone caught up in the ebb and flow of life and not willing to push towards any shore that offered better things until right at the end of the book.

A young gay man moves to NYC after a breakup and ends up working for / involved with a powerful art world couple. This is the ultimate self discovery novel that so perfectly captures the time in your early 20s where you’re completely aware of your flaws, but not yet strong enough to change your behavior. I not only loved, but felt like I knew these characters. I miss them already. I loved this book!