Read this for my Big Gay Bookclub. This follows a cast of gay characters on Fire Island in 1989, sort of at the tail end of the worst of the AIDS epidemic. Our main character, Joe, moves for the summer to bartender with his friend Ronnie and ends up falling in with a gaggle of mysterious old queens that the rest of the island calls the Disco Witches and who maybe burned down a club one time.

It walks a pretty careful line of being a bit mystical without going too overboard (for my personal tastes). There is real pain and grief surrounding the many queer people lost to AIDS, but rarely is it taken without hope for the future. Joe is a very frustrating character, but I don’t find his fears and actions necessarily unreasonable with the life he’s lived. The ending is a little neat but honestly, didn’t bother me that much. Overall I liked this read and it read pretty authentic to the era.

Creature