I found the author unable to covey why this particular man was so addictive to the central character, which kind of undermined the story as it just wasn't believable. But these aren’t things that are most pronounced when you are in love, they are truths, which reveal themselves over time, like the bones of a skeleton as the flesh rots away. But is also one of *those* books: the queer story as old as time where the narrator, rootless, adrift in memory and untethered in time, slowly unwinds for the semi-voyeuristic, semi-empathetic reader a doomed love story. I was SO looking forward to reading this after the furore within the industry of ringing in this new talent I am left totally dumbfounded.

there in the gallery, i think i finally began to understand that you and Adam really were just what you said you were, just two gay men, just two guys who have sex with guys, that’s all. With your right hand, you extend what I first read as a gesture of a gun towards me, then you wrap the two straightened fingers around the twisted strap of my bra and say, ‘What’s all this then?

At Certain Points We Touch is as much a love letter to the glamour and glory of countercultural nightlife as a self-aware sendup of its absurdities and deprivations. I did like this book for the most part but this did have some moments that just dragged and it made it harder for me to read. But this book is also an excavation of the world we all live in, a depiction of the ways in which love affairs reflect and refract political circumstances and beliefs, and an exploration of how technology has changed and how it has changed us.

Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. There were only those you esteemed, and those you detested, and I had the dubious luck of being pinched between the two like loose cargo on deck, thrown between prow and stern on turbulent seas. The flamboyance of life is not lost on JJ, they take full advantage of the freedoms of youth yet, in all the time that has passed since the introductory paragraphs, leading us to the moment we encounter this written eulogy to a dead lover, JJ has made zero progress in developing a sense of self. But why should a Myspace profile be preserved when whole civilisations have been annihilated to boost the egos of European monarchs?

You know from the start that it is building towards Thomas James' death, and you really understand how the narrator wants to hold off getting there and telling a death they weren't there for as much as they want to unfold the story. It's four in the morning, and our narrator is walking home from the club when they realise that it's February 29th - the birthday of the man who was something like their first love.

Looking about me now, ten years since we met, six years since we last spoke, four years since your death, acknowledging this indefatigable era of puerile talking heads who have clawed their way to infamy, with a little of manufactured outrages, stoking, their phony, moral panics, I can’t help thinking that you were a sort of John the Baptist for them all. Stylistic niggles aside, though, this is a hip and cool take on the lost love narrative - and what a great cover! At Certain Points We Touch is a story of first love and last rites, conjured against a vivid backdrop of London, San Francisco and New York – a riotous, razor-sharp coming-of-age story that marks the arrival of an extraordinary new talent. Excursions into the self lead back to a difficult childhood in Northern England, to snowy and depressive Berlin, to a sun-filled Greek island. It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters.Thank you to the publisher for providing me an advanced e-copy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. In 2011, Chitra Ramaswamy was dispatched by her editor to interview Glasgow Jews Henry and Ingrid Wuga for a story about refugees. all gorgeously hedonistic and glittering cities and swirling snowstorms and swims in the sparkling blue ocean. At times it feels like an older novel, but then it throws in modern references and muses on the longevity of digital culture, and you remember that this is recent. i requested a copy from netgalley after seeing glowing reviews, and sat down on march first (phantom february twenty-ninth) in the hopes of reading it all in one feverish sitting, and then just -- couldn't.