Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me with a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

“But they were all like pieces of bubblegum you chew hours after the flavor leaves and that you accidentally swallow, and then (supposedly) sit in your guts for seven years.”

100 Boyfriends is an unapologetic exploration of queerness and sex. And it’s punk rock as hell. Purnell’s prose is candid, frank, and a little chaotic in the way that he puts fucking on full display. He doesn’t hold back. He doesn’t hold the reader’s hand or stop and explain. Either you’re along for the ride or you’re not and there’s nothing here that suggests that Purnell cares one way or the other.

There is a voyeuristic quality to the construction of these stories. They’re quick and to the point, jumping to a new vignette at the exact moment that you think you’ve settled into the story. Purnell doesn’t give you time to wonder about their lives beyond this moment before the curtain closes and reopens on the next scene. Many of his characters aren’t given names and sections become a long stream of bodies clashing into one another.

One thing that surprised me is that for a book that is, on the surface, all about fucking there isn’t a lot of deeply erotic prose. Descriptions of sex is simple and to the point in a way that makes it feel mundane. That connection between the endless mundane nature of sex as an act is a theme that runs throughout this book. The frank commentary on who is fucking who at any given moment in the book is neatly juxtaposed alongside Purnell’s poignant lines that dig deep into the psyche of his mostly unnamed characters. Purnell’s prose is witty and piercing and digs into the hearts of characters we only live with for two or three pages at a time. “The boy, as far as he and I are concerned, could show up to my house with a severed head and I would still let him in--that’s how unnecessarily devoted to him I am.” Moments like this cut beneath the veneer of sex, drugs, and chaos to pull out the theme of longing that is present in modern queer stories. We always want more. More fucking, more adventure, more love. Just more.

It would be a massive disservice to this book to write all of this and not talk about how funny it is. This surreal odyssey through self-sabotage and questionable decision is crafted with a dry wit and self-awareness towards the absurd.

100 Boyfriends easily situates itself inside the modern canon of southern, black, gay novels like Real Life by Brandom Taylor and memoirs like How We Fight For Our Lives by Saeed Jones.

Purnell presents a series of vignettes that unfurl the spectrum that love, sex, and relationships can take. As a whole, the overall collection is a strong mission statement on the fragility of our lives. Like any other collection, there are stronger sections than others. The shorter, more flash fiction, style fragments were a little broad. Anytime the reader is given the chance to go deeper with a lengthier piece, we are treated to an insightful voice that needs the room to explore.

Brontex Purnell is a queer legend. 100 Boyfriends is equally delicious, disgusting & delightful romp through 100 future/present/past lovers who the protagonist calls boyfriends with varying levels of sincerity. Watching the black, gay protagonist slip in and out of self-awareness, self-harm & sub-clinical sex adduction is at times harrowing, but ultimately I’m grateful that black queer people are allowed to be messy, vulnerable and arrogant in turns on the page rather than a fictional binary of perfect victims & perfect heroes is to be celebrated. Excited for all my friends to catch up & read this book when it comes out next year. Thanks so much for the e-ARC MCD/FSG and Netgalley.

Book Review for 100 Boyfriends by Brontez Purnell
Full review for this title can be found at: @fyebooks on Instagram!

This book is such a work of art! The vignettes are each unique and the writing is super visceral. The only thing I wished for was that the book was longer!

Slightly confusing at first due to it's lack of a linear story line, Purnell's 100 Boyfriends did not disappoint. Through a series of vignettes it takes a look at the lives of queer black men in America living in cities, the rural south, and everywhere in between. The dark humor and raw emotion make this a very compelling read. Purnell has packed a lot into a short novel, looking at many aspects of his characters lives and tackling themes such as sex, loneliness, horniness, drug and alcohol abuse, interpersonal relationships, success, failure, aging, and living with HIV. 100 Boyfriends is a well written book that will stay with readers long after the last page.

Thank you to NetGalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing me this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

What to say about Brontez Purnell’s raw and uncompromisingly shameless depiction of homosexuality and blackness? Well, for starters: it’s a doozy! But a worthy doozy. Like riding a bull on acid. Flitting between dark humor and emotional poignance, we the reader are taken on one hell of a ride through the trials and sexualized tribulations of what it means to be a queer black man via varying vignettes. It never once feels disingenuous. Only glaringly open, critical, and hauntingly honest.

The writing here is fluid and clear; I don’t know how else to put it other than Purnell’s prose is a gift. The man has a way with words. I’m f***ing jealous as f***.

”Where God closes a door, He opens a window,” but all I can think about is, like, But wait, the window is on the third floor and the house is on fire.”


”I let him charm me more, I let him let me think I was special—I knew at my core that he was waiting to unzip his face.”


”...everybody is left with the ghost of somebody else.”


This short novel isn’t for the prudes. There’s lots of foul language, emotional ricochets, a plethora of alcohol and drugs (weaving together a rather grim portrait of the devastating—yet, ongoing—opiate/methamphetamine crisis facing the gay community), and lots and lots and lots of sex. It’s a story of stories; of addictions and obsessions, jaded individuals and vulnerabilities, misanthropy and loneliness, horniness, hilarity, and truths.

Purnell examines this all with a candid, unflinching realness

Brontez Purnell fearlessly approaches what would be considered raw and subversive by typical literary standards and runs so far past, into the darkness, that you may not believe what's on the page. It's spectacularly vulnerable and brave albeit quite shocking. Purnell writes so shamelessly, humanity just, ya know...shoots forth.

Through a series of nonlinear stories told mostly in first person, and occasionally in third, we piece together a portrait of sex, addiction, and otherness. Purnell is unrelenting in his portrayal of sexual transactions; his narrator repeatedly falling weak to horniness to then left to feel deep emptiness. It's that string of common themes that makes the often disparate stories feel singular. A painfully familiar ebb and flow of gay male sexuality.

Without sugar coat or romance, Purnell rips the polished exterior of gayness, blackness, maleness deemed palatable in literature clear off to examine what actually compels the sexual deviance so characteristic to the gay community. I particularly enjoyed Purnell's epilogue, an itinerary of a rock band's European tour, as detailed in the sexual conquests as in the performances themselves.

This is an AMAZING book. Many times, I wanted to laugh or cry, but Purnell keeps it real and emotional. Something about the way that Purnell writes signals to me that Purnell has "the gift of the pen," as noted in his Acknowledgements section. The vivid use of visionary descriptions using all five senses, as well as the exploration of black gay male homosexuality, entreat the reader into wanting more until they've been reading for three hours, are done with the book, and still wanting Purnell to tell them more stories.