The narrator a middle age gay man that lives in a small town in Florida, is trying to pickup the pieces of his life after losing his parents. He is living alone now, in the same house that he used to share with them, but the place is falling apart and he doesn't seem to have the energy to do something about it. He reflects on aging and decadence and some other painful topics like who is going to be by his side when his time comes. Now, his good friend Earl is dying and his slow deterioration leads him to rethink his own life and the bonds he has formed throughout it.
The book is on the slow side and nothing really happens in terms of action. The descriptions are at some point tedious but I think that it contributes to build a dense and slow atmosphere that is attuned to the protagonist foggy state of mind. He seems to be in perpetual grief, for the past and for the things to come.

Delighted to include this title in ‘The Rainbow Connection,’ my latest round-up for Zoomer magazine’s Books section highlighting new and notable books for Pride (see mini-review at link)

This book is a beautiful and sensitive portrayal of love and loss, and a mourning for a past time.

Our narrator circles through their thoughts, reflecting on the glitzy heyday of gay life in the 70s and 80s, but also looking at it with the wisdom of age, realising what- and who- have been lost.

He looks after another man, a man who is quietly seeing out his final days, and in doing so, provides a haunting and beautiful portrait of the endurance of love and care, even amongst the harshest backdrops.

I received an advanced copy of the book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

THE KINGDOM OF SAND by Andrew Holleran (2022)

This follows an aging gay man in small-town Florida as he reflects on his lonely life and the small world he has created for himself. It is particularly focused on the impending reality of death: both of his parents are long-dead, and his close friend, a gay man 20 years his senior, has semi-recently died after a long illness. Single and childless, he fears what awaits him.

In many ways this novel is similar to THE BEAUTY OF MEN, which I read last year: the setting, the exploration of gay men who no longer have the asset of youth, the preoccupation with death. But that novel was very focused on the main character’s survival of the AIDS crisis amidst the death of many of his friends, while this novel is much more mundane. (Indeed, dying is presented as a long and banal process.) AIDS is only mentioned a handful of times and is not a preoccupation of the narrator. He is vain, health-conscious, mostly closeted; his life is structured by shame; fear of judgment; and capitulation to what other people think. His life is made up of small, fleeting intimacies. As he remarks, “One can make a life around almost any set of circumstances.” He has accepted his circumstances, reluctantly settling in Florida after an exciting youth in New York. Ultimately I think THE BEAUTY OF MEN expired similar themes in a more compelling way, but this is still worth a read. Holleran skilfully builds a pitiful character, the flip side to the hedonists he depicted in his debut DANCER FROM THE DANCE.

I was fascinated by the idea of a new, contemporary Andrew Holleran novel. Dancer From the Dance, his classic gay tale of emptiness and community in the 1970s gay underground of New York City, is a defining piece of LGBTQ literature. It is inherently tied to its time and place, which may make it difficult for younger readers to access. What, I wondered, would Holleran bring to a more contemporary landscape?

In many ways, The Kingdom of Sand feels like a companion to Dancer From the Dance. Its protagonist could easily be one of the background players in Holleran's former novel (indeed, he mentions partying in New York City in the 1970s). Unlike Dancer From the Dance, though, this book isn't training its eye on what it is to be gay at this point in time. Instead, Holleran is focusing almost exclusively on aging and death. His narrator is obsessed with the knowledge that he is nearing old age, decline, and death. The Kingdom of Sand is, essentially, his musings on this subject.

While Holleran leads the reader through heavy thought on life and death and has many well-considered ideas to get across, the book ultimately felt hollow to me. It doesn't have a form or plot. Novels don't necessarily need to have those, of course, but The Kingdom of Sand feels more like listening to a close friend of yours tirelessly pick at the same scab every time you run into them. Eventually, your patience begins to wear thin.

Part of my frustration is probably because I really wanted Holleran to think more about what it is to be an elderly gay man today. What is it like to have been alive and out before AIDS, to have miraculously survived when so many didn't, and to find yourself in a new age of Grindr and marriage equality when you are no longer (strictly speaking, of course) young enough to enjoy them? The Kingdom of Sand only glances at these topics. It never has anything coherent or intelligent to say about them.

I confess I lost interest roughly 60% of the way into this novel, but I told myself to hang in until the end because I was willing to believe that Holleran would tie everything together in a meaningful, impactful way. I believed these musings on life, death, and the indignities of declining health would come to a crucial point. Unfortunately, they don't. Turns out, the point is more that there aren't answers: it is what it is. While that sentiment is true, it doesn't feel revelatory. So while there are occasionally some staggering lines (“Love and kindness have a lineage their recipients know nothing about"), The KIngdom of Sand, for me, ultimately feels like an interesting journey that doesn't lead anywhere.

This is a story about loneliness.  It is told from the perspective of a nameless narrator, a gay man, who moves to a small town in Florida to take care of his aging parents.  Even after his parents pass away, the narrator finds he cannot leave the small town where his parents spent their retirement, despite his few and diminishing connections there. 

The narrator's central and most frequent connection becomes Earl, a gay man twenty years his senior.  The two most often spend time together at Earl's home, listening to Earl's large collection of records and watching his favorite old movies. Earl in many ways has a fuller life than the narrator, and the narrator frequently finds himself questioning his role in Earl's life.  But when Earl's health begins to fail, the narrator must confront his own mortality, the choices he made, and what his life will be like when this last connection to the place he made his home for so much of his adult life is gone.  

This is a powerful story.  It is in many ways a sad story, as the narrator explores his regrets as he faces the twilight of his life -- regrets that alternatively seem attributable to his own choices and to the way society pushes many people, especially toward the end of their lives, toward isolation of different sorts.  It offers interesting insights into aging; love, friendship, and other types of conenction; the nature of loneliness; what we owe each other; and the similarities and differences in the experiences of different generations of gay men.  This is one that you will be thinking about long after you put it down.

Highly recommended!

I wanted to like this book so much like really wanted to, because Holleran is one of those early LGBT authors whose work has stood the test of time for decades. And that's why I requested a copy from NetGalley.*

What I didn't expect was how similar to Mrs. Dalloway and A Single Man this would be. I think that bodes well for the longevity of the novel, but unfortunately, for me, it wasn't the time or place to read it to truly appreciate or enjoy it. While there were some incredibly beautiful passages throughout, I struggled to get into the book and (for the most part) identify with the nameless narrator.

The two biggest problems for me were the incredibly long fifth chapter, "Hurricane Weather", and the repetitive ramblings of the narrator. I get why the fifth chapter was so long, but why call it hurricane weather when the book is set post-hurricane season and doesn't have any flashbacks or references to hurricanes. Maybe Holleran was connecting the chaos of aging and losing friends and family and the neighborhood changing around the narrator, but the connection was tenuous at best. As for the ramblings, I 100% get why those are there. If you've ever had a conversation with our grandparents or any older person, you know about the circles they talk in and revisiting old stories, but oof it was rough on me. I was convinced I'd read some passages three or four times, but when I went back I'd find similar passages which at least confirmed I wasn't totally crazy.

The best part of the novel was the narrator's various discussions of death and moving on, which was ironic as he never moved on from his parents' deaths and basically lived in a tomb dedicated to them rather than moving forward with the life that he'd put on hold in the mid-1980s. I liked the observational quality of how he talked about the neighbors and how their children handled their aging and ultimate deaths and the way his friends prepared for it as they all aged, or even how his best friend, Earl, did/didn't prepare for death.

Holleran's writing of older gay characters was incredibly interesting to read. From how they got off at local video stores and boat docks, to the nameless narrator's obsession with the store clerk and pharmacist at Walgreens, you got a true feel for the isolation of being an elderly gay man of a different generation that wasn't interested in apps or, perhaps even a relationship, and lived solely for the anonymous occasional getting off and observational qualities of existing and pining from afar without disrupting the dream/imaginary relationships he cherished.

Recommendation: I think there is a lot of worth in this novel. Holleran is a part of a generation of LGBT authors and survivors that are slowly dying out of old age and by setting his novel firmly within that generation in this period he's presented a protagonist we don't see very often in pop culture. He doesn't edit or cut out aspects that were crucial to gay men in the 70s and 80s and have continued to trail (if lessen) over the decades and he writes frankly about the end of life of parents, friends, and self. As I was reading I was simultaneously frustrated and impressed with the minutia of the book and the grand sweeping observations Holleran made, but ultimately this one wasn't for me.

*I received a copy of The Kingdom of Sand via NetGalley in return for my honest opinion. No goods or money were exchanged.

In one of my recent reviews (Robert Ferro’s novel ‘Second Son’, first published right before Ferro’s death in 1988), I mentioned that I suspected one of the secondary characters, a middle-aged man living in Florida where he’s taking care of his ailing mother, was modelled after Andrew Holleran, famous “veteran” writer of gay literature, author of ‘Dancer from the Dance’ and ‘Nights in Aruba’, amongst other books, and like Fero member of the illustrious Violet Quill. Now, I could be mistaken, but I also suspect that the nameless narrator of this book is modelled after its author Andrew Holleran himself—like Holleran, he was born and spent his childhood on a Carribean island (Aruba in Holleran’s case), after all. There’s also Felice Picano’s probable roman à clef 'The Book of Lies' (Picano was another member of the Violet Quill), where he talks about the group, thinly veiled behind the name The Purple Circle, and where one of the surviving members is living a recluse’s life in rural Florida, like the narrator of ‘The Kingdom of Sand’. But as I said, I could be mistaken; moreover, Holleran is known for being very protective of his private sphere, so let’s not roam off into the kingdom of speculation.

No, let’s remain in the ‘Kingdom of Sand’. This is the story of an ageing (dare I say: old?) gay man, single apparently because he chose to be, of no known profession, with only a handful of friends he’s not too close to and a peaceful, some would say rather dull life, a bit as if he had already forsaken any attempt at a real, active life. “I’d hidden myself away from life and everything that made it brutal,” he mentions at one moment. He’s living in his late parents’ house in northern Florida, somewhere between Gainesville and Keystone Heights if I remember correctly. To be honest, out of sheer curiosity, I google-earthed the region, and on my 21—inch screen it looked much less dreary than it sounded in Holleran’s prose. In fact, the narrator has an intriguing take on things, in turns charmed like a child, then weary like someone who’s already spent too much time on this earth.

It’s rather hard to summarize the plot because how can you sum up something that isn’t there? Not “isn’t there” in the sense of an absence, but in the sense of tiny, tricky, slippery grains of sand that simply trickle between your fingers when you try to scoop them up. All you can do is throw them into the wind and enjoy their golden sparkle in the sun. It’s substance without weight, or rather without anyting weighing anything down. In this book, the narrator seemingly starts rambling on page one, recalling memories triggered by trinkets in his house, say, or a chance encounter, or the odd thought while he’s going for a stroll, and continues rambling till the last full stop. Yet what at first glance appears as the streaming digressions of a (bitter? not so sure…) old man has a sort of logic, a sort of consistency, the coherence of someone who projects the image of being happy to be by himself yet who needs this exercice to keep at bay “the silence of spiders spinning webs,” as he says.

Often, and quite naturally, too, these long excursuses that sometimes go in circles deal with the subjects of getting old, namely getting old as a single gay man, and of death. The narrator’s father died in the house, his mother in a care unit after a fall down some stairs that left her paralyzed. His closest friend Earl (probably not his best friend, and even the word “closest” has to be seen as a geographical indication rather than one of emotional bonding) is getting old and older before his very eyes, and the narrator observes his increasing “decrepitude” in fascinated, minute detail: the fight, the defiance, the anger at first: “Perhaps that’s what death is as far as the person dying is concerned: a supreme insult to the ego, a narcissistic wound beyond compare—Hitler in his bunker.” Then the fatigue, the lowering of one’s arms, the searching for armistice, the silent pleading to have just a couple of days more, and if possible without too much pain. And finally, the give-up, the tidying of one’s life and possessions (“The most considerate thing we can do when we get old is to clean things up so that others don’t have to after we croak”), the corpse-like acceptance that precludes the inescapable end.

If this sounds bleak and dry, boring and depressing, you haven’t read the book. Because despite the narrator’s growing misanthropy, he remains a helluva lucid man who observes the world he lives in—a small, small world indeed, yet one that reflects the big World outside, the one with the capital W—with wry humor and the prophetic sense that all the ailings and deaths he witnesses will one day be his lot, too. Most importantly, however, and here we go from the story to the teller, from the narrator to his (I still think probable) muse and model: the author. Andrew Holleran, who knows how to write, knows how to craft a beautiful sentence and does it not only for a beautiful result, form-wise, but also to fill it with deep meaning. In other words, this book, and I expected no less, was skilfully written, with a fluid, handsome quill, where words flow into each other to not only create sense, make a story emerge, but also to create atmosphere(s).

My personal recommendation for this book is sincere and firm. Andrew Holleran has brought me closer to the gay youth of the 70s (my birth decade) in ‘Dancer from the Dance’, one of the first gay novels I ever read. Here, Holleran has shown me what could await me in my older years (although, the gods willing if they exist, I’ll still be with my hubbie), and he has done so brilliantly, a master of evocative language and atmosphere.

The first book by Andrew Holleran in sixteen years is an exquisite meditation on growing older and coming to term with the end of life. Holleran, who is now in his late seventies is from a generation of gay writers like Larry Kramer and Paul Monette. Literary heavyweights in the canon of LGBTQ lit, most of whom have now since passed from AIDS.
#KingdomOfSand feels like a continuation or maybe more an extension of his previous works, the closest being #TheBeautyOfMen which like this book took place in the authors home state of Florida and dealt with an aging gay man who has come home to take care of his dying mother.
This time Holleran presents an unnamed narrator who for the bulk of the book talks about his relationship with one of his neighbors, also a gay man who is twenty years older. “By the time Earl was in his eighties and I was in my sixties there were evenings when I walked home from the movie wondering if my interest in him was slightly sadistic: watching what happened when old age gets its claws in you, or at least puts you to sleep in your chair, like a man overcome with carbon monoxide in a closed garage.”

His musings on life, on loneliness and the tenuous connections we keep with one another to stave off the isolation of existing on an metaphoric island by yourself reminded me of alot Elizabeth Strout, both in her sense of humor but also in her deep empathy and understanding of the human animal. Holleran has that too, capturing so many elements of the march of time including the loss of your parents as well as the being alone as you get older, and all of the potential complications that can arise.

I thought this was an exceptional piece of literature that almost feels like it could be autofiction. It’s measured and thoughtful in its pace, and that’s exactly what it should be as he metes out plenty to ponder. Thanks to @fsgbooks and @netgallay for the advance reader copy.

We are so lucky to have Andrew Holleran back, and his first book in many years doesn't disappoint! Another gay classic

This is an impactful novel. It explores the life of an unnamed narrator who returns to the small town where his parents retired to take care of them as they begin to decline. Even after his parents pass away, the narrator stays in the town despite few strong relationships there. The novel explores what it means to grow old in a place where one has such few connections or attachments, particularly as those few connections begin to fade away. It also examines what home means, and the way that a place where one never expected to end up becomes central to one's life and even their identity.

This book is a thoughtful examination of aging, death, love, family, and friendship, and the ways one's life does and does not meet expectations.

Highly recommended!

This is a melancholy meditation on age and loneliness. There isn't very much of.a plot, not a linear one anyway, but the nameless narrator has some fascinating and true observations to offer on so many subjects, most notably getting, let's face it. old. The Florida setting is terrific and palpable. The narrator's relationship with Earl, who is 20 years older and about to slip away feels as though it's something Holleran himself has experienced. Lest you put this aside thinking it will be dreary, know that the narrator also has a wicked sense of humor. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. A good read.

“At such moments I felt completely content; I’d hidden myself away from life and everything that made it brutal.”

THE KINGDOM OF SAND is a tale of loneliness, friendship, grief, and death. It’s a powerful character study that unveils its secrets slowly, and in surprising ways. Little details that at first sight may seem unimportant will appear over and over again in the story, which gives it a conversational quality.

It’s a book that requires a little bit of patience, but it’s worth it. You should hold off on reading this book if you’re looking for something that’s fast-paced and packed with twists and turns.

This book reminded me of SECOND PLACE by Rachel Cusk, and even a little bit A MAN CALLED OVE, but gayer.

Unfortunately not a style of writing I am a fan of. I'm glad to have read it, but I wouldn't recommend - far too slow and ponderous for my taste.

Source of book: NetGalley (thank you)
Relevant disclaimers: none
Please note: This review may not be reproduced or quoted, in whole or in part, without explicit consent from the author.

I finally managed to make myself read this due to a “read the bottom book in your NG queue” pact I made with Ellie on Twitter.

I … I honestly don’t know what to say.

This is a beautifully written, depressing as hell book about being a white gay dude getting old in Florida. My favourite extant review of it pans it for being a poor portrayal of Florida. It’s kinda … something I guess … that all these white gay dudes who wrote about being young and beautiful in the 70s are now writing about being old and under-laid in the 2020s. The Kingdom of Sand, in particular, offers a weird, melancholic but oddly inevitable-feeling bookend to The Dancer from the Dance.

There’s no real plot here to speak of. The unnamed narrator, in his early sixties, is living his parents' old house in Florida. Here he meditates in a sort of thematic haze about his life and contemplates his future, while his friend, another gay man living alone, some twenty years older than the narrator, gradually dies.

Death and loneliness (and Florida) are the main connectors here: I don't necessarily include queerness because the death and loneliness have a universal quality to them, and the queerness is very specific to a particular of American white gay man. Props, though, for taking on some legitimately terrifying shit about mortality and vulnerability, the loss of desirability and place in the world. It’s really hard to know what to say about the book because … my mind sort of recoils from thinking about any of this, when… y’know, maybe it should? Or not?

I can admire, in abstract, the technical facility of this book: the way something that feels so formless is clearly so tightly controlled, the precision of the detail whether it’s talking about character, or bodies, or the changing landscapes of Florida, the crispness of the language (which is even kind of bleakly funny sometimes, “The only difference between [my father and I] was that he had played solitaire and I was watching people have sex: a generational decline, I suppose.”)

But the truth is, I kind of … ended up getting very little from this book on a personal level. I think perhaps because I didn’t want to. I think I’m just not ready for this book: not quite young enough for it to feel irrelevant to me yet old enough to fear the almighty shit out everything it speaks of. Even if its conclusion is not wholly hopeless and my own plan for my twilight years is to selfishly pre-decease my partner.

“The first touch of winter in North Florida, especially when the cold front triggers a long day of rain, always makes you feel that life is turning inward, that when you get home, there will be someone there.” So begins The Kingdom of Sand, the latest from Andrew Holleran (Dancer From the Dance).

The Kingdom of Sand is billed as a novel, but features a unique structure (at least, to me!): chapters are unnumbered and referred to by title, almost as though the book is a collection of short stories. The principal differences from a short story collection are the continuity of the narrative (which is not as immediately obvious in the first three chapters) and the fact that the fourth chapter comprises about 2/3 of the novel. In this relationship to the larger-scale architecture of the novel, I’m reminded of both fictional works by Garth Greenwell: What Belongs to You, with its shorter middle section in a single paragraph, and Cleanness, billed as a work of fiction rather than a novel or a collection of short stories, with characteristics from both. I liked this unevenness, a lot, actually; I get the sense that Holleran wrote what he needed to write and stopped where he needed to stop. Maybe this is true; maybe, on the other hand, the divisions were deeply calculated. I do not know, but my impression coming away from the book is that these divisions felt natural.

The book’s unnamed narrator, a single gay man, lives in his family home in Florida, where he has resided for much of the year since his parents passed away. The novel is a slow and reverent observation of change; centrally, the changes that come with aging, as seen in the narrator as well as his friend Earl, whose friendship is the focus of the chapter at heart of the novel, “Hurricane Weather.” The narrator becomes increasingly isolated as the story goes on, and more than once mentions feeling haunted by his parents presence in the house he can’t bring himself to change, in their things he can’t bear to get rid of. So it goes that this is a novel preoccupied with death, one whose epigraph from Saint Benedict even announces this plainly: “Keep death daily before your eyes.”

The Kingdom of Sand is unsparing in its description of the indignities that come with aging, first viewed by the narrator at a remove, as he watches is parents age; then, just as he begins to experience them himself, he watches from the front-row as Earl runs the gauntlet of cancer, shingles, opiate pain medications, of falling down and waiting for hours to be found. Much of the novel is lived in a space of varying trepidation, the narrator’s expectation and fear of Earl’s impending death and of his own aging: “Everything seemed menacing and redolent of death, even the rusted rowboat that had been sitting on the neighbor’s lawn like a dead turtle for forty years, as if someone still might take it out onto the lake. “There is no wealth but life,” said Ruskin. But life had become something fragile, unpredictable, and dangerous to me, a series of small things that could blow up in one’s face.”

Holleran’s writing about the friendship between the narrator and Earl is to me special in that the relationship itself is as large a character as either of the ‘participants’; it is a study in the things this friendship, separated by twenty years, demands of each person, the unnamed expectations, the rituals, the unique circumstances—cruising at a boat ramp—that led to its formation. There is a beauty in watching the importance of Earl to the narrator’s life unfold; when he is first mentioned, it’s in a throwaway manner, but by the halfway point Earl is of central concern. The narrator balks the first time Earl offers to leave him something, but eventually he forces himself to accept Earl’s gifts, seeing the gratitude the older man has for the process; all of this culminates in a sad and beautiful line at the novel’s end.

For all the bleakness, though, he can be very funny. “The ancient Greeks thought old men obtained virility by ingesting the semen of young ones. Nowadays you take a multivitamin,” he writes. There are at least three mentions of the size of Earl’s handyman’s ass, most gloriously described as “his enormous ass covered by the absurd Levi’s cutoffs.” Earl himself, meanwhile, “treated his yard with such brutality I could not see how he could be homosexual.” Speaking of a young woman with a nose piercing who has moved away, the narrator says: “Since I could think of little more alienating than piercing one’s nose in this town I was glad she’d moved on.”

Holleran’s writing is rewarding for the truths he speaks, for that humor, that interweaves with the sorrow, and for his gorgeous prose. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything that makes me want to go to Florida less than The Kingdom of Sand—maybe that’s a very specific trait for a book to have—but when the narrator’s cynicism towards the state falls away in the face of nature, Holleran’s description of the physical world is beautiful. “Some evenings I set out at twilight, when the sky was still a pale, pale blue above the dark silhouettes of the trees just after sundown. As the light faded, a sort of mysterious dignity descended on the town, until, when it was completely dark, it assumed another personality altogether. It was so easy to love the town in the dark, the glowing windows of the houses, the streetlight at the end of a dark tunnel of trees, the utter peace and quiet.”

Vulnerable and empathetic, The Kingdom of Sand is a beautiful and sometimes heartbreaking meditation on loneliness and old age.

Wow, what a gorgeous (and devastating) book - truly an urgent reminder to live life with purpose and passion. I was sort of expecting The Kingdom of Sand to be a lot of "lonely desperate older man cruising" vignettes, but was pleased to find an unapologetically honest and unsentimental story about an intergenerational friendship between two gay men...one that never shies away from the loneliness of the gay male aging process, the meaning we assign to all the useless objects we accumulate in our lives, the stubborn male libido, the crushing monotony of life in a small Florida town.

We all deserve someone who walks by just to make sure the light is still on

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐ ½
Genre: Literary Fiction + LGBTQIA

The Kingdom of Sand is the story of loneliness, isolation, and the feeling of not belonging whether it is to the family, friends, or society. The book is narrated in first-person style. Our narrator is a nameless person. He is a single aging gay man who lives in Florida. Through his narration, the reader gets to know his relationship with his parents, sister, close gay friends, and also his adventures and hookups in this small town.

Although there is no specific plot in this story, the narrator’s words flow like sand’s movement on a windy day. It is a beautifully written book that tackles many subjects important to any person regardless of his sexuality like getting old alone, illness, and the death of a relative or friend. It deals with the sense of feeling lonely even when you are surrounded by others.

I was not a fan of the first few pages of the book. That is not the fault of the story. I usually do not care much about knowing or understanding the setting and locations in contemporary stories. So if you are like me, do not quit. Continue reading because you will be immersed in the protagonist’s narration.

The book has some dialogue between characters but the main focus here is the main character’s narration. We as readers are following his words, living in this town through his eyes, and experiencing all the different emotions he is going through. Whether those emotions are grief, sadness, lust, or plain loneliness that he has accepted over the years. Sometimes he makes you feel that his closest friend in his world is that loneliness! He is so used and comfortable with it that he doesn’t feel like going to his sister’s on the Eve of Christmas despite loving her. He’d rather be by himself in his lonely world.

What fascinates me about such stories is how they feel relatable. The reasons could be different from one person to another but the concept is the same. The pain is the same. The protagonist here is a homosexual and the probability of leading a lonely life for people from the LGBTQ community could be more than the others because still not everybody is living and has the same chances as others.

I love the book’s cover and title. I have my own interpretation of why the author might have chosen this title. To me, the kingdom represents the protagonist’s life. It is a kingdom of loneliness. It is fragile and made of sand in reference to the main character’s aging and uncertain future. The wind will eventually move all that sand away, scattering it all over the place and then one day it is all gone when the end comes. Loved it.

Many thanks to the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and NetGalley for providing me with an advance reader copy of this book.

Loneliness can happen at any age…in any part of the world….
…..unbearable emptiness, fear of social anxiety, depression, crying easily, with aching feelings of going unnoticed.

In “The Kingdom of Sand”…..Andrew Holleran examines these feelings through a Gay,middle-age man.
The nameless narrator (NN), has never been married, is childless, has had hookups, boyfriends, other gay close friends, but lives alone.

NN has aged out of the youthful bar scene —
…..loneliness has become his common companion — along with gay porn.
As a gay man, NN is obsessed with the way he looks - how other people look - (compares his body, and sexual magnetism against his close friends).
He is obsessed with what he eats - and notices what other people eat.
“I was a sucker for the list of foods that supposedly increased longevity (Swiss chard, mustard greens, blueberries, and still decades later after Adelle Davis, those old standbys, sardines). I believed somehow in the absurd idea that if you ate right you could live indefinitely. Even when, a decade after my mother‘s death, I began getting skin cancers, all I could think of was: how could this be. Given all the broccoli I’ve eaten? It must be loneliness, I concluded, the lack of a person to live for other than myself, since we are also told that health is psychosomatic. Meanwhile the little boxes of tea taken from the gift basket a woman had sent after my mothers death sat in the cupboard along with my father‘s bottles of scotch, and in the cheese box in the refrigerator the little triangles of Boursin from the same funeral present, which I would not permit myself to eat, and in the freezer my fathers last carton of Breyers vanilla ice cream, turned yellow as hard as stone”.

This is one of those rare adult novels that deals tenderly and honestly with adult life — most predominantly the single aging gay man— (we meet his friends, his community, learn about his parents, their illnesses, medical handicaps, and deaths, his dirty-feelings of shame, small town realities, sexual distractions, and sexual/relationship desires)….
but….
…..*anyone* who’s going to die,
…..lives in Florida,
…..or has ever spent time in Florida,
…..has ever had skin cancer,
…..tries to eat healthy,
…..is middle age, (any gender, race, or sexual identity),
…..have had parents who have died,
…..lives alone,
…..feels lonely, fearful of aging alone, sad, old, wrinkly, and squishy,
…..has ever felt dirty from buying a porn video from the video store,
…..has wondered if assisted living is a place for you,
…..has started thinking your next event: death,
…..has been actively present with a loved-one from decline to death,
…..can remember the year 1961,
…..remembers drive-in movie theaters,
…..has felt nervous to go home for Christmas,
…..have accumulated things that you can’t bear to part with before you die…..
etc. etc. etc.
…..and enjoys quiet novels that often moved you more than action driven books do,
…..will get value from this book!

There is no giant plot…(on the surface it’s a simple story)…but dig a little deeper, and it’s likely to have a more labyrinthian feeling…..an awakening to all the million of things that make up our lives.
……a beach would not be as beautiful if each grain of sand did not have its own place…..

I was instantly drawn into the gorgeous writing. The characters are so seriously real to me.

The setting is spot on exquisite…..fitting perfectly with this story.
“The town to which Earl and my father retired was not one of those artificial communities created for people in the last stage of life with which Florida is associated. But it had its share of the elderly. It was good to be reminded by the Regular of another stage of life, especially when I stopped off at the post office on my way home from his shack. The people moving slowly toward the post office on walkers when I went to get the mail induced both pity and admiration; pity for their condition, admiration for their determination to keep going”.

I ached ….. for the loneliness of NN ….for his desires not met….his fear of dying alone.

I savored the prose…the quietness and intimacy felt. The contemplation of of living, loving, and dying.

I laughed…..(oh there is wonderful organic laughs….funny bone treasures!)….
….. that gave the topics of aging, Gay-aging, dying, loss of youthfulness, worries of no longer being sexually desired, grief…..etc….a transcendently humanitarian beauty that took my breath away.

5 strong stars …I loved it!

Thank you Netgalley, Farra, Straus, and Giroux, and Andrew Holleran

You know when a book comes out of left field and reading it ends up being such an emotional wallop? I received ‘The Kingdom of Sand’ as a Netgalley arc and promptly forgot about it until I checked my bookshelf and realised I had only a week in which to finish it. Luckily for me it is under 300 pages, and also a book hard to put down once you start it.

Holleran, of course, is author of the classic ‘Dancer from the Dance’ (1978), and this apparently is his first novel in nearly two decades. How on earth do you follow up such a seminal work so far down the line, especially as a shining star of The Violet Quill writers’ group in the 1980s (Christopher Cox, Robert Ferro, Michael Grumley, Andrew Holleran, Felice Picano, Edmund, George Whitmore).

Now aged 79, Holleran tackles what is perhaps one of the most ignored topics in contemporary gay literature: Getting old and sick, and dying alone. The situation is doubly compounded if you are gay, especially if you lost a partner to Aids or simply natural attrition, or never ever found ‘the one’. A lot of gay people are also estranged from their families, who disapprove of their ‘lifestyle choices’, while gay friends of a similar age (and outlook) are few and far between. As Holleran says, who on earth do you call when you need to go for that colonoscopy?

If all of this seems depressing and offputting, fear not. You will be amazed at our unnamed narrator’s sexual appetite (and stamina) deep into his sixties, and his cruising habits in the small town in which he has chosen to settle (and eventually pass away in). The book is deeply funny, tender, humane, and surprisingly unsentimental. Holleran’s glorious writing – long, lingering sentences, even longer chapters, and a painter’s eye for detail and effect – hums with the vibrancy of life and passion.

At the core of the book is the unnamed narrator’s ‘relationship’ with Earl, who at two decades older is about to begin the path of inexorable decline that we must all undertake in the end. It is a quiet story, filled with wonder and pathos, and unflinching about the terrible toll that age can exact.

It is no spoiler to reveal that Earl does finally succumb to what Henry James called “the great, the distinguished thing.” He does so quietly in the middle of a paragraph, as discreetly as he had lived his entire life. There follows an incredible passage where we find the unnamed narrator sitting at home watching the teeming animal and insect life in his unkempt garden, thinking of his just departed friend, and what a precious gift life is in the end, simply due to it being bestowed upon us so arbitrarily and briefly:

When the American novelist Howard Sturgis lay on his deathbed he was cared for so solicitously by his life partner that at one point Sturgis had to remind him, “A watched pot never boils” – surely one of the wittiest comments ever made while dying, unless you consider what the socialite Drue Heinz said when nearing the end – “They won’t even let you take a book” – or the emperor Vespasian, who remarked on his deathbed, “I think I am turning into a god.”