Readers' rating:
Publishes
Jun 11, 2024
288 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Tomas Moniz—a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway and Lambda Literary awards—delivers a commanding new story about the power of friendship, community, and the families we create for ourselves.
Efren "Chino" Flores has just moved back to the Bay Area from Seattle, jumping from sublet to sublet. In Washington, he was a beloved middle school biology teacher with a loving wife and a child on the way until a stunning loss changed his life. Now he's working temp jobs and struggling to put himself back out into the world.
But there to nurture Chino is a coterie of new and old friends and lovers who form a protective web around him. Closest to him are Metal Matt, a red-haired metalhead with a soft spot for Courtney Love and a rangy dog named Sabbath, and Mike and Kay, a couple whose literary edge is matched only by the success of their secret OnlyFans account. As Chino begins to date more men and women—and to open himself up again to love—his bonds with other people grow both rich and profound. Like a fern blooming in the wake of a forest fire, new life comes after even the most devastating upheaval.
With gorgeous, heartrending detail and a seemingly infinite catalogue of tender, unexpected interactions, Tomas Moniz has created a striking mosaic of desire and belonging. An anthem to both queer and platonic love, All Friends Are Necessary evinces the wonder of friendship and the joy of giving yourself up to the essential force of community.
"[B]ighearted and introspective...Moniz's thoughtful narrative demonstrates the reparative power of friendship, and how it can even transcend the bonds of love. Readers will be entranced." —Publishers Weekly
"Tender and open-hearted, sexy and messy and deeply human. I absolutely love this novel." ―Nina LaCour, author of Yerba Buena
"Vibrant, alive, and absolutely devastating in its beauty, All Friends Are Necessary is like a late-night phone call with your best friend—exuberant, confessional, and above all, honest. Cutting to the heart of grief in all its multitudes, one man finds his way back to a new version of self after deep loss. Sexy and subversive, I tore through this book, inhaling line after surprising line, feeling myself want to reach into the pages and be saved too." ―Chelsea Bieker, author of Godshot and Madwoman
"All Friends Are Necessary brings much needed tenderness, beauty, and hope into the world. This splendid and rejuvenating novel will make you feel so full and alive, held and comforted. Tomas Moniz has created joyous companions and a book to cherish for ages. I love these characters and will miss them endlessly." ―Joseph Han, author of Nuclear Family
This information about All Friends Are Necessary 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.
Tomas Moniz is a Latinx writer living in Oakland, CA. His debut novel, Big Familia, was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway, the LAMBDA, and the Foreward Indies Awards. He edited the popular Rad Dad and Rad Families anthologies. He is the recipient of the prestigious SF Literary Arts Foundation's 2016 Award and the 2020 Artist Affiliate for Headlands Center for Arts. He currently teaches at Berkeley City College and the Antioch MFA program.
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