GLR November-December 2023

her. Attention serves as a form of love, an acknowledge ment of a life outside oneself. She explores what reconciliation means within the con fines of love and sex, death and money. This gesture is broad, but its wide scope redefines reconciliation to be something less permanent. Wark focuses on adjustment, and the act of revisitation becomes a sort of homemade remedy that might not heal an injury, but, at the very least, acknowledges its pain. There is an honesty in these letters that evokes a kind of self-awareness existing in the body and in the text. In “To Veronica,” Wark mentions a conversation she had over lunch with a friend, also trans, about the ways trans peo ple are seen by each other and by cis strangers, weaving to gether personal experience and theory to support her claims, naming Nietzsche and Plato, among others. To avoid the subject of sleeping with Veronica’s ex, she talks about gender theory: “I was hoping to distract you from that. Alright, so I fucked your ex and didn’t tell you. These things happen, hun.” The title’s themes of love, money, sex, and death are somewhat explored, though at times they remain only tan gentially related. Perhaps it is this vagueness that gives Wark’s new memoir a certain elasticity. By inscribing her present self onto her past through a return to memory, she achieves her goal “to shock flesh into awareness,” to bring her body into different periods of time. In that respect, Wark sees letter writing as a way of recovering the past, but also making space for what was left out of the original story. In recounting various experiences, she reveals a kind of love that isn’t explicit, but nevertheless remains impor tant: it is an attention that validates experience, making space for change, or, as Wark might say, a new edit.

When You’re in Love with a Friend’s Partner, you’re trying something on in the dark. Sure it will fit perfectly. No matter how taboo you know it will look. You hover. Silently. A satellite gathering data. On a stealth mission. A spy. You are your own makeup artist, painting a poker face that resists the tendency to blush. When you’re in love with your friend’s partner, you become a master of nonchalance, a silhouette of cool. A verbal ballerina accustomed to the ache of tiptoeing through conversations. You must act as your own secretary. Making appointments with yourself. M EETING T UESDAY 9am: Tell him. You cancel. And reschedule. Cancel. Reschedule. When you’re in love with your friend’s partner, you consider leaving your post, even fucking up to get yourself fired. Because how else can you leave without explanation? Because you know you will be tempted to return, letting yourself get stuck with no future. Just because you love the company.

M ICHAEL M ONTLACK

B R I E F S story”) and Zeus (“the busiest bisexual the mythical world has ever known”). How ever, he also discusses lesser-known fig ures such as Iphis, who changed gender from female to male, and Baubo, who ex posed her vulva to cheer up the goddess Demeter.

QUEER HEROES OF MYTH AND LEGEND ACelebra ti on of Gay Gods, Sapphic Saints, and Queerness Through the Ages by Dan Jones Radar. 219 pages, $19.99 Dan Jones, author of 50 Drag Queens Who Changed the World and several books about cocktails, keeps things entertaining in this overview of fifty queer mythic heroes. He writes like your campy gay friend who stud ied religion in college and calls the Norse god Loki “mythology’s sloppy frat bro” and the Greek god Pan “the hairy-legged goat daddy of the eternal cruising grounds.” Queer Heroes is a quick read, a good start ing point for readers who want to learn about queer myths and legends before delv ing into the topic more deeply. Roughly a third of the book is devoted to Greek and Roman mythology. Jones discusses many of the ancient world’s most famous queer icons, such as Achilles and Patroclus (a “tragic, musclebound love

SPRING IN SIBERIA: A Novel by Artem Mozgovoy Red Hen Press. 256 pages, $18.95

Alexey put on layers of clothes, readying himself for the long winter walk in deep Siberia to his elementary school, the Palace of Knowledge. Called “alien” there due to his large head, he spent time alone with thoughts of escaping the swirling antagonisms. Physical Culture courses were the bane of his existence. Instead, he buried himself in the school library, where poetry books and an English language program caught his interest. He was hooked, and he found his way to the Pioneers’ House of Culture, where he recited a poem by Pushkin, winning a spot at a summer camp for gifted children. That led to his acceptance into a prestigious gymnasium for elite students. Alexey met Andrey there, an older and wiser student who became his constant companion. After spending time together,

Jones also covers many figures from other cultures, like gender-swapping Princess Budur from One Thousand and OneNights , Tu’er Shen (a queer Taiwanese rabbit god), and the Inuit spirit Sedna. His book includes some historical figures, like the Daughters of Bilitis and the Minoan Brotherhood (a gay Wiccan group founded in the 1970s), but also characters from con temporary literature and popular culture. LGBT people tend to find inspiration wher ever we can, so why not look to Yara Greyjoy from Game of Thrones or video game icon Zelda? Queer heroes can be found in some unusual places.

P ETER M UISE

TheG & LR

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