In Tongues
A Novel
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4.3 • 44 Ratings
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- $3.99
Publisher Description
Longlisted for the 2024 Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Named one of the Best Books of 2024 by Glamour and one of them's Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2024. RuPaul and Eric Cervini's Allstora Book Club Pick for June.
“A novel that should become the touchstone of a whole generation.” —Edmund White
It’s 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon—handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction—takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it’s the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city’s punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites’ dogs. But it isn’t until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Philip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him—and what he’s capable of doing in order to get it for himself.
A lush, heart-quickening novel about family and art, sex and class, and the terror of self-discovery, Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues chronicles Gordon’s perilous pursuit of belonging from the Midwest to New York and, later, to Europe and Mexico City. As he floats further into Philip and Nicola’s exclusive universe, and as lines blur between employee, muse, lover, and mentor, Gordon’s charm, manipulations, and growing ambition begin to escape his own control, in turn threatening to unravel the lives, and lies, of those around him.
Anchored by winsome lyricism, glinting intellect, and a main character whose yearnings and mistakes come to feel like our own, In Tongues crackles with fierce longing and pointed emotion, further confirming Thomas Grattan as a rare chronicler of young adulthood’s joys and devastations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Would there ever be a time where the biggest thing in my life wasn't difficulty?" wonders the young gay narrator of this impressive sophomore novel from Grattan (The Recent East). Soon after Gordon moves to New York City in summer 2001, his self-pity lifts when he starts working for an older gay couple, art dealers Philip and Nicola, first as their dog walker and then as their personal assistant ("Being needed a drug I couldn't turn down"). However, Gordon gives in to some reckless impulses—he kisses Nicola, takes clothes from both men without asking, and throws a party in their home while they're away. He also falls for Pavel, an aloof but charming painter, and grapples with his troubled relationship with his disapproving father, who's recovering from a heart attack. While Gordon attempts to explain his self-destructive tendencies ("Giving up felt good") it is with the friendship that develops between Gordon and Philip—first during a trip to Europe, where they watch the 9/11 attack on TV, and later when they briefly live together—that Grattan elicits the most emotion. In the author's skilled hands, Gordon's bad judgment and sentimental education make for terrific reading.
