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A Novel
by Andrew Holleran
One of the great appeals of Florida has always been the sense that the minute you get here you have permission to collapse.
The Kingdom of Sand is a poignant tale of desire and dread―Andrew Holleran's first new book in sixteen years. The nameless narrator is a gay man who moved to Florida to look after his aging parents―during the height of the AIDS epidemic―and has found himself unable to leave after their deaths. With gallows humor, he chronicles the indignities of growing old in a small town.
At the heart of the novel is the story of his friendship with Earl, whom he met cruising at the local boat ramp. For the last twenty years, he has been visiting Earl to watch classic films together and critique the neighbors. Earl is the only person in town with whom he can truly be himself. Now Earl's health is failing, and our increasingly misanthropic narrator must contend with the fact that once Earl dies, he will be completely alone. He distracts himself with sexual encounters at the video porn store and visits to Walgreens. All the while, he shares reflections on illness and death that are at once funny and heartbreaking.
Holleran's first novel, Dancer from the Dance, is widely regarded as a classic work of gay literature. Reviewers have described his subsequent books as beautiful, exhilarating, seductive, haunting, and bold. The Kingdom of Sand displays all of Holleran's considerable gifts; it's an elegy to sex and a stunningly honest exploration of loneliness and the endless need for human connection, especially as we count down our days.
"This vital work shows Holleran at the top of his game." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"[T]hrilling... Holleran is fiercely a pointillist. His observations about the minute details of his narrator's life feel revelatory—and not always specific to the lives of gay men." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[T]he narrator and Earl come alive on the page, commanding readers' attention to what is a splendid, remarkably good book." - Booklist (starred review)
"So many of us are wondering, how do we live after losing everything and everyone we loved? Some of us have lived through that, from the most recent pandemic before this one. Andrew Holleran's report from the other side is a novel with, if not answers to guide us, questions to guide us. An unexpectedly timely novel—wise, shrewd, and in its way, kind, if honesty is ever kind. And written with the sure hand of a master." - Alexander Chee
"Andrew Holleran writes about desire so beautifully it's occasionally been forgotten that he's one of the best living novelists on friendship. This tender, often very funny novel is a book about that final field of play between friends, when all the masks are removed. I wish it never ended." - John Freeman, author of How to Read a Novelist
This information about The Kingdom of Sand was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Andrew Holleran's first novel, Dancer from the Dance, was published in 1978. He is also the author of the novels Nights in Aruba and The Beauty of Men; a book of essays, Ground Zero (reissued as Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited); a collection of short stories, In September, the Light Changes; and a novella, Grief.
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