Hamilton,
Frieze
"The triumph of this book is to turn our current cultural obsession with all sorts of hybrids and mixtures from an aesthetic challenge into an urgent question of how we can make lives alongside each other. As all the best writers of comedy know, from Shakespeare to Jane Austen, the pleasure of falling in love is a structural pleasure: life at these moments is more narrative than non-narrative. Gladman makes the diagrammatic structure of comedy explicit and in doing so braids together her self-conscious interest in romance fiction as a genre and her growing obsession with it as a source of pleasure." Lara Feigel,
The GuardianMy Lesbian Novel is a brilliant fusion of improvisational narrative and aesthetic treatise. It s fiction and not. It s also a hoot. And even (eventually) hot with charm, it swirls horniness with helplessly nerdy literariness. Megan Milks,
4Columns
"
My Lesbian Novel makes up its own math, rewires a plot from scratch, offers everything one might want from a romance novel, rooted in both quotidian and fantastical matters hot sex scenes, chance encounters in the best of public spaces, parks and museums, and the best offering of all: instructions on how to write your own." Ayaz O. Muratoglu,
The Brooklyn Rail My Lesbian Novel is so small, so deceptively simple, that it s surprising how nourishing it feels. Gladman has mastered the literary pleasures of slowness and withholding, of leaving space for possibility and growth. . . . The genre of her lesbian novel, Gladman is constantly reminding us, is romance a love story about mutual discovery and mutual change. Beneath the deadpan humor is a philosophical commitment: The most important thing about falling in love with women is women.
Lois Beckett
, LuxReaders of Gladman s previous work will recognize her brilliant thinking and penchant for challenging experiments, though this is her most accessible book yet. . . . It s a knockout.
Publishers Weekly, starred review
Gladman doesn t simply deliver the lesbian novel you may expect from the title, though italicized flashes of a novel are found interspersed alongside the central dialogue between an interviewer and a character named Renee Gladman. The resulting book moves from intellectual ambition to bodily yearning, while exploring Gladman s own compulsions to articulate thought in writing or to transcribe gesture in drawing. John Vincler,
CulturedA perfect introduction to all things Gladman, certain to hook a whole new swath of readers. Drew Broussard,
LitHubI ll follow Renee Gladman anywhere. Her form-breaking books are otherworldly in their glories and when I found out she was writing a romance novel (well, sort of), I decided I didn t need to know a single thing more and immediately ordered it. Of course, it is far stranger and trickier than that but it s also Renee Gladman tackling the hot genre!! Let s go!!
Literary Hub, Most Anticipated
An expansive, experimental, genre-bending new work from Renee Gladman,
My Lesbian Novel explores art-making, queerness, philosophy, desire, and identity as an artist. Autostraddle, Most Anticipated Queer Books of Fall 2024
My Lesbian Novel is philosophical and funny and optimistic and frustrated and needy because it desires a literature that doesn t quite exist yet. Maggie Lange,
Purse BooksMy Lesbian Novel is a genre-bending celebration of lesbian desire that offers an innovative shape for queer romance, a craft lecture spooning its own novel. Gladman shows that true romance emerges through dialogue, shaped between partners, no matter if they are lovers or writers wrestling with love. Erin Vachon,
The Rumpus My Lesbian Novel represents an arresting, dialogic approach to the philosophy of lesbian and queer narration and a new triumph in Gladman s ever-innovative body of work. John Keene
Gladman is, easily, one of the most intriguing and important writers of our time. Amina Cain
No one writes prose like Renee Gladman. Lucy Corin
Renee Gladman has always struck me as being a dreamer she writes that way and the dreaming seems to construct the architecture of the world unfolding before our reading eyes. Eileen Myles
Reading Gladman, I sometimes feel I m watching a mastermind manipulate a Rubik s Cube, except the goal isn t to solve it but to present every possible arrangement. Ben Purkert,
The RumpusGladman s precise and incisive writing makes me feel like I m right alongside her investigating the limits of literature. It s an adventure into the avant-garde. Also, I will read anything that comes from Dorothy! Laura Hughes (co-owner, Basket Books & Art in Houston, TX)
