Boys of Alabama: A Novel [Hardcover]

Hudsons writing is magnetic. Its like the Kristen Stewart of prose  chameleon-like, layered, funny and serious and sad, really gay, and so attractive.... It wrecked me, just like I wanted.... Hudson grew up in Alabama, and their complex relationship with the place shines through in this story, which quietly and then loudly hurtles toward a climax that had me staring into space for a full 10 minutes after I read it. Debut novelist Hudson sets her unique coming-of-age tale in a hot, swampy Alabama steeped in football and God. . . . This is a little southern gothic, a little supernatural, and a little reminiscent of Wiley Cashs suspenseful A gripping, uncanny, and queer exploration of being a boy in America, told with detail that dazzles and disturbs. Genevieve Hudson dismantles and spins a new category of fairy tale for us, one thats equal parts dirt and splendor. A glinting, dark beauty. An incantation. This novel is a love song to outsiders of all kinds, a queer love story about the ways we find to heal ourselves and each other, and proof that there can be magic amid the burdens of masculinity. Genevieve Hudson has conjured a novel that sets place as a touchstone. Every field is alive: every leaf, every insect, every crawling thing. Hands beget love, words set like sweetness on the tongue. The magic contained in Genevieve Hudson creates a new American erotics of longing and belonging, flush with want and desire, hope and home, translation and transformation. Hudson goes right to a place where violence comes fromuncomfortably close to desire for magic, God, sex, whatever might actually heal usand doesnt turn away. One of the finestand weirdest!first novels Ive read in quite some long time. [Depicts] a brand of Southern-fried masculinity that is immediately recognizable and startlingly fresh. This is an exquisite book. Reminds us that behind so many of Americas most rigid beliefs lies the lonely human heart: twitchy, slippery, alive. US