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I initially had no intention of reading this... Levithan tends to write with an exceedingly heavy hand and a novel narrated by a Greek chorus of men dead of AIDS sounded like a recipe for overly-sentimental mess. But then it made the Nat'l Book Award longlist, which is being judged by a couple of authors I hold in rather high esteem... and so far, this is actually pretty fantastic. And hitting a bit close to home...

Gotta love a serial killer procedural that doubles as a pitch black satire of celebrity worship culture. "The Pittock Mansion Head, as everyone was already calling it, had made national news. CNN quoted a source at the ME's office saying that the head's eyes were missing. They were running an online poll where you could guess what color they were going to be, Brown was winning two to one."

Well this is fascinating. Futuristic sci-fi Brazilian society, already raising interesting issues concerning class and sex, and fluidity of sexuality is the norm. Early on, but already easy to see why this is a National Book Award nominee, the sentence-level writing is strong as well

Oh for goodness sake. This is a well-written exploration of a girl's semester abroad in Leningrad with a melancholy undercurrent, but the cover makes it look like some cheesy romance.