IN TONGUES (Book Review)

By Thomas Grattan

 

(Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2024) 

 

 

There’s a lot that’s right about this novel. The voice is distinct, the writing very good and yet there still seems to be something off. 

 

I suspect it’s by design. It’s the main character, after all, whom I did not come to embrace. Hard to like a book when you never connect to the central character.

 

It’s 2001 and Gordon moves from Minnesota to New York City, staying in a rundown area of Brooklyn, looking for sex in parks while working as a stocker at a grocery store. The sex in parks scenario feels like a gay novel cliché, the character partaking always getting it easily and often. Another gay cliché in the book involves how a young gay man (Gordon is mid-twenties) is a lure for rich older gays. (Do NOT read Edmund White’s most recent book, The Humble Lover, about a rich old man obsessed over a young, self-absorbed ballet dancer.) 

 

Gordon feels aimless and passive throughout the story. Things just happen to him. Jobs fall in his lap. Men may seem disinterested but, no, they always want him. He’s not particularly considerate with his bestie, Janice, nor to his parents, nor to Philip, Gordon’s de facto benefactor. To be fair, Philip is rather aloof when he isn’t being direct and/or mildly cranky.

 

The relationship between rich, seventy-something Philip and Gordon is supposed to be the heart of the story, but there is very little heart in it. There are two scenes in which Gordon steps up as a caretaker, perhaps more, for Philip but the relationship generally has a stilted coldness to it that kept me from caring.

 

Moreover, Gordon has a loafer mentality and he does things that made me cringe. That’s not going to end well, I’d often tell myself as I read. It’s painful to watch a character do stupid things. In the end, we’re supposed to see growth in Gordon. He has a steady, reputable job. He does another dumb thing but then makes a correction…only after an acquaintance points out the potential implications. 

 

As an aside, I feel I may have developed lung cancer from second-hand smoke from all the times Gordon smokes cigarettes in the novel. Maybe all the resulting puffy clouds are supposed to represent the greyness of the novel’s tone. Is that something to strive for?  

 

I suppose my disconnect with the book comes with never really understanding what Gordon cares about. So often in scenes, he seems present rather than passionate. He’s just as aloof as the people around him. People come and go and it doesn’t matter all that much. 

 

I don’t regret reading In Tongues. My response is, however, consistent with what Gordon’s would be: a shrug before moving on.