The Kingdom of Sand

Oof, what a suffocating book. I read it as quick as I could manage because it was both very moving and yet also very depressing and I just wanted to get through it as quickly as I could. But I have a feeling I'll be thinking about it a long time.

It’s a novel narrating a 60ish year old gay man’s declining life of isolation in rural Florida and his friendship with Earl, a gay man some twenty years older than him. Its depiction of loneliness and aging weighs heavy, it’s not a happy read. But it’s also honest and moving and thoughtful. These are gay stories that need to be told.

One odd thing that's stuck with me; the narrator is very annoying. He repeats things, whole phrases and ideas, like he's forgotten he's told them to you. Sometimes he focuses on irrelevant minutiae. I was left wondering if this was an artful fictional narration of what a lonely aging man sounds like, or if it was instead the author's own weaknesses coming through. The prose is so finely crafted and the book so well edited I think it must be deliberate but I'm not certain.