The Lesser Bohemians

A really challenging read. The prose is astounding and some of the most beautiful writing I've ever read, but the narrative it's in service of is troubling. Broadly about how trauma becomes a constant lens through which you view relationships, and the difficulty of ever coming out of it, mediated through a 20 year age gap relationship. The degree to which the dynamics are addressed was never particularly satisfying to me, and becomes very explicitly romanticized as if the problems were purely historical.

There is so much I love about this book - its tenderness, intimacy, and willingness to engage bluntly with challenging topics - but by the end it becomes too infatuated with its characters to commit to the end that's coming. Will be thinking about it for a long time all the same, please do read the content warnings if you are considering picking this up.

A romance between two damaged peopled, further complicated by a large age gap. I was almost ready to drop this, after the first half hour, because the poetic, stream of consciousness prose was pretty hard to get used to. But then the romance, with all its sexy bits, started, and I was pulled in.

This is mostly a first person narrative, but sometimes it became a crazy game of telephone. Like when he told her, what his ex told him, what his step-father had told her, what his mother had told him! It really worked in those moments, but what an interesting choice for presenting a lot of the heavy plot.

3.5