Four Squares
Ratings1
Average rating5
15
Ratings1
Average rating5
From the beloved author of The Old Place comes a tender, funny, and fresh novel about a gay writer in New York City whose life is irrevocably altered, thirty years apart. In 1992, on his 30th birthday, Artie Anderson meets the man who will change his life. Artie spends his days at a tedious advertising job, finding relief in the comfort of his friends and the corner of New York City he can call his own, even as the queer community is still being ravaged by HIV. But when his birthday celebration brings Artie and his friends to his favorite bar, a chance encounter with Abe, an uptight lawyer and Artie’s opposite in almost every way, he is finally pushed to want, and to ask for, more for himself. Thirty years later, Artie is stunned when Halle and Vanessa, Abe’s daughter and ex-wife, announce they are moving across the country. Artie has built a lovely, if small, life—a steady career as a ghostwriter, a beautiful apartment in the West Village, family in Halle and Vanessa—but their departure makes Artie realize that he might be lonelier than he previously thought. When a surprising injury pushes Artie into the hands of GALS, the local center for queer seniors, a rambunctious group of elders insist on taking him under their wing. Alternating between both timelines, Four Squares is an intimate look at what it means to find community at any age and a touching meditation on the aftershocks of both love and grief. With humor and compassion, it honors the enduring power of queer friendship, its history, and how essential it is to keep those stories alive.
Reviews with the most likes.
"That’s what the book’s about, right? The pleasure of finding your people?"
This book is about Artie, a man in New York trying to make it as a writer writing his first book, hanging out with his friends at a local bar, dealing with complex relationship issues, and just generally living life as a gay 20-something in a big city. This book is also about Artie, an approaching-elderly man 30 years later, trying to make the best of things without his close friends and lovers, attempting to make himself useful by volunteering at GALS, the local LGBTQ senior center and falling (literally) into a new group of friends he has to navigate now. We bounce between these two time periods as Artie’s story is fleshed out, following him through high and low points, and just generally getting to know this man’s life story.
I’m not even in the demographic this book is about, and I thought this book was delightful. There’s something about following a person through their life that really gets to me sometimes, and I thought the author did an incredibly good job of making me feel invested in Artie, both in the past 90s period and the current 2022 period. There’s occasional dark moments in Artie’s life, but the author does a good job of making even these low points seem worthwhile and meaningful in his life. The 90s period especially brings up a lot of tough topics surrounding the AIDS crisis and the impact it has on their community, but I thought it was very respectfully done.
Just a book about a guy and his found family, delightful and heartwarming.
I won a free copy of this ARC from Goodreads Giveaways.
