The House of Impossible Beauties: A Novel

Update (02/11/2018): I finished this book and I'm experiencing so many emotions that I'm not sure I'll be able to convey how incredibly beautiful this book is—it's so much more than a novel, it's an exquisite novel that pays overdue homage to the diverse voices of 1980s/1990s LGBT life that have often been overshadowed. Cassara has written a bold, raw, and compassionate story about life. He does an incredible job shedding light on the lives of transgender youth during a time that provided little support and resulted in many young people running away from home. Cassara's novel will stay with you, it will linger, it will command a permanent place in your heart. - - - - - - Disclaimer: I'm only 50 pages into this book, but I can't put it down. Joseph Cassara's novel is beautiful, raw, real, and... it's brilliant. It's a powerful novel that tells the stories of LGBT young people during the 1980s and 1990s. Through their stories, we bear witness to LGBT voices that have largely been overshadowed and under-told. In short, the stories have yearned to be shared and Cassara has given them a voice. The novel takes place at an important juncture in LGBT history and right from the beginning you're introduced to society's shifting views regarding LGBT people. From the first few pages, the novel takes off with a pace that immediately turns it into a page-turner. Cassara's novel is likely to receive many accolades, but my greatest hope for this book is that it's read far-and-wide by…

The characters were so real. You felt every emotion and cried at every death and injustice. You get so pulled in and engrossed in their lives, anticipating the next chapter even as you dread it, because you know another inevitable tragedy awaits in the coming pages. This was an emotional rollercoaster. Great debut album.

Inspired by the real events captured in the documentary “Paris Is Burning”, this novel follows the lives of 4 young, Latin-American, gay and transgender people in 1980’s New York. Angel, Venus, Juanito, and Daniel all left behind troubled pasts to try and make it on their own in the city, and wind up forming their own family with each other, as they struggle to get by however they can. There are moments of incredible beauty and joy in this book, as the 4 of them make the best of their situation, comfort each other, and fall in love. But of course, being poor and facing frequent discrimination, even in a city as liberal as New York, means that life comes with more than its share of darkness as well, which this book doesn’t shy away from. Drug addiction was rampant in the city’s gay party scene at the time and the AIDS crisis was in full swing, and both of these things take their toll on our protagonists’ lives. The highly romanticized look at the era that occupies much of the book only makes the tragedies that strike at the end that much more impactful. Written mostly in the third person, but in the sassy, Spanglish language of the characters, it makes the story feel more personal, and really helps you feel like you are a part of their lives. This is a very sad and very beautiful book, that exposes the reader to a world they probably know nothing about, filled with people who they will remember for a long time to come. A strong contender for one of the year’s best.

So as is the story of my life, I have been wanting to read this for a long long time. I even bought this book a year ago in order to push myself to read it and it took me this long. I am so happy that I spent time with this book and it became my unofficial beginning to Pride Month. This book is so layered in terms of themes and character. I found myself being that book person who was underlining and highlighting passages because they just had so much meaning. Family and Home are two very common themes of the book. The family we are born in and the family we choose or chooses us. The home we are born in and the home we chose to live in. What is home? How do we make a home? In thinking of several points of this book the song It’s My House by Diana Ross comes to mind. Joseph Cassara writes about both giving human angles to these topics. You cry, you laugh and your heart swells and aches. If you have seen the documentary Paris is Burning some of these Legendary Icons depicted on the page. Joseph pulls the humanity out of them showing that they are not people on the page but they are living and breathing. No matter what life throws at them, they are powerful, they are resilient and they fight. Venus, Hector, Angel, Dorian, Daniel, Juanito and Tyler haunt the pages, their stories bursting at the seams. The novel is beautiful, haunting and is just a must read.

A time jump where no character explains what happened during those "missing" years. One main character disappears until the end. A pretty bleak book about a very bleak time.