Middle Spoon
A Novel
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2.0 • 1 Rating
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“Middle Spoon subverts the ordinary novel with intelligence and vulnerability. . . . Varela has made a sly, analytical opera of the heart.” —Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less and Less Is Lost
“A rollicking delight! . . . Varela asks provocative questions about the shape of family and the nature of love.” —Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Crush
One of Today’s 50 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2025 · Named a Must-Read Book of Fall 2025 by Town & Country, W Magazine, and more
A whip-smart, blazingly funny novel about heartbreak, unconventional love, and the way society could be, from National Book Award finalist Alejandro Varela
The narrator of Middle Spoon appears to be living the dream: He has a doting husband, two precocious children, all the comforts of a quiet bourgeois life—and a sexy younger boyfriend to accompany him to farmers markets and cocktail parties. But when his boyfriend abruptly dumps him, he spirals into heartbreak for the first time and must confront a world still struggling to understand polyamorous relationships. Faced with the judgment of friends and the sting of rejection, he’s left to wonder if sharing a life with both his family and his lover could ever truly be possible.
With a big heart and just the right dose of the anxieties that define the modern era, Middle Spoon skewers the unspoken rules we still live by—from taboos around intimacy to the shortcomings of Oscar season, pop culture, and gluten-free food—offering a surprising perspective on love, loss, and reinvention. Equal parts heart-wrenching and uproariously funny, Middle Spoon is for anyone who has longed, nursed a broken heart, or grappled with love at its messiest.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this searching epistolary narrative from Varela (The Town of Babylon), a married middle-aged gay man tries to move on from an ex-boyfriend who wasn't prepared for polyamory. The unnamed narrator, 43, a public health researcher raising two young children in Brooklyn with his husband, remains stuck on Ben, an attractive 30-something who took him to trendy parties and spiced up his sex life. When they met, Ben claimed he could handle sharing the narrator with his husband and children, but after a few months, Ben broke it off, realizing he wanted more. To cope, the narrator writes but doesn't send a series of emails to Ben, which, along with other scattered missives, comprise the novel. Among the subjects explored are the narrator's academic field, which he entered out of a hope to "make the world better"; unfortunately, the musings on public health add little to the story. Much better are the narrator's descriptions of everyday routines as he attempts to forge a love life on his own terms and be a good dad. While riding the subway with his eight-year-old child, Jules, who is nonbinary, he responds boldly to a man's taunts over Jules's gender-nonconforming outfit: "Why do you care what my kid wears?" It's a refreshingly candid tale of modern love.
