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Book Reviewed by:In between the space of time when Ezra lights themself on fire and when Ezra dies the world of this book flashes before their eyes. Everyone Ezra's ever loved, every place they've felt queer and at home, or queer and out of place, reveals itself in an instant.
Unfolding in fragments of memory, Ezra dissolves into the family, religion, desire, losses, pains and joys that made them into the person that's decided on this final act of protest.
Told in lyric fragments that span both lifetimes and geography, Yr Dead is a queer, Jewish, diasporic coming of age story that questions how our historical memory shapes our political and emotional present. Visceral, propulsive, and at turns fluorescently beautiful and fluorescently tragic, Yr Dead is the electric debut novel from award-winning writer Sam Sax, one of our most dynamic and imaginative writers.
Presented as a series of fleeting, non-linear vignettes, the novel plays very literally with the notion that our whole life flashes before our eyes just before we die. Ezra's memories of pain and joy as a queer, Jewish youth flood over them, and accumulate for the reader into a moving exploration of suffering and desperation... While Ezra's personal pain is a large factor in their decision to end their life, external factors, like the climate emergency and international war, also play a role. Ezra clearly feels the weight of these social issues, and struggles to reconcile their passionate desire for change with the futility of their actions...continued
Full Review
(851 words)
(Reviewed by Callum McLaughlin).
Yr Dead is author Sam Sax's debut novel, but not their first published work; they have previously published four chapbooks and three full collections of poetry, one of which won the James Laughlin Award and another of which won the National Poetry Series. Many other well-established poets have also turned to fiction with great success. A few of them are featured below.
Ocean Vuong
Ocean Vuong is known for his emotionally charged work that explores sexuality, Vietnamese American identity, and human connection. His debut collection Night Sky with Exit Wounds was published in 2016 to much critical acclaim and a string of major awards, including the T.S. Eliot Prize and the Whiting Award. He followed it up with the 2019 novel On Earth We're...
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A rare, compulsively readable combination of thunderous lyricism and pitch-perfect humor. There is not a wasted sentence, or even word, in this brilliant queer gem of a book.
