The Book:
Let’s Get Back to the Party by Zak Salih, 2021
The Characters:
Sebastian
Oscar
Get it on Amazon.
The Plot (from Goodreads):
It’s just weeks after the historic Supreme Court marriage equality ruling, and all Sebastian Mote wants is to settle down. A high school art history teacher, newly single and desperately lonely, he envies his queer students their freedom to live openly the youth he lost to fear and shame.
So when he runs into his childhood friend Oscar Burnham at a wedding in Washington, D.C., he can’t help but see it as a second chance. Now thirty-five, the men haven’t seen each other in a decade. But Oscar has no interest in their shared history. Instead, he’s outraged by what he sees as the death of gay culture: bars overrun with bachelorette parties; friends getting married, having babies.
While Oscar and Sebastian struggle to find their place in a rapidly changing world, each is drawn into a cross-generational friendship that treads the line between envy and obsession: Sebastian with one of his students and Oscar with an older icon of the AIDS era. And as they collide again and again, both men must come to reckon not just with one another, but with themselves.
The Review:
An interesting look at contemporary gay romance.
I appreciated the different perspectives throughout this book: Sebastian, who wants to settle down with a husband and a family, Oscar, who believes settling down is for heterosexual couples, and Sean, who offers the point of view of an aging gay man. All of the characters are flawed, but in a relatable, realistic way (for the most part. I can’t say I relate to the pursuit of young boys or the sharing of an underage boy’s nude photos.). It was interesting to read the same scenes from both Oscar and Sebastian’s perspective, and hear each man’s internal struggle about the same situation.
I’m glad I listened to Let’s Get Back to the Party as an audiobook, because I can’t stand when dialogue doesn’t have quotation marks. I refuse to read physical books without them!
Overall, I enjoyed the story and the message.
