Middle Spoon

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. Agent: Robert Guinsler, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Sept.)