Introduction
Wayne Koestenbaum has established himself as a deliberate and provocative figure in American queer literature. Contrary to what the title of his latest novel, My Lover, the Rabbi, might suggest—a straightforward narrative about the tension between religious orthodoxy and forbidden love—the book defies conventional realism. The story centers on the intense desire of a man who restores antique furniture for another man employed at a synagogue. This desire is universally accepted by every character in the narrative. Koestenbaum’s prose deliberately rejects realist conventions, instead embracing an obsessive and candid style that vividly portrays both the dangers and pleasures of obsession. The novel stands out as one of the most intense and unusual works readers will encounter this year.
Style and Structure
The novel’s intensity is evident from the outset. It comprises 188 brief chapters, with the opening chapter consisting of only four lines. Koestenbaum employs punctuation and vocabulary in unexpected ways, immersing the reader immediately into a world marked by physicality, confusion, and highly specific details. Almost every chapter includes the book’s title, which gradually resonates throughout the text like a recurring mantra. This repetition is not mere stylistic flourish but a deliberate and anxious formality that is central to the novel’s unique vitality. The synergy between style and subject matter is both striking and effective.
Plot and Influences
As the narrative unfolds, the plot reveals itself to be reminiscent of 19th-century literature, despite the novel’s otherwise modernist form. Set in a recognizable contemporary America featuring anonymous lakeside apartments, aging conspiracy theorists, and alternative family structures, the story’s main elements—infidelity, illegitimacy, madness, shopping, coincidences, and death—could be drawn from the works of Balzac. Similar to Balzac and Proust, who were masters of exploring obsession, the novel discloses that nearly all characters are interconnected through intimate relationships or other entanglements.
The protagonist, a furniture restorer, is driven by a Proustian desire to uncover the secret behind his rabbi lover’s enigmatic allure. He perceives this attraction as both commanding and unfathomable. Like Proust’s Swann, the narrator convinces himself that the essence of his lover’s appeal lies not in their physical relationship but in some hidden emotional realm. Ultimately, the narrator fixates on unraveling the mystery surrounding the death of his lover’s three-year-old son. Each attempt to clarify the child’s identity, the circumstances of his death, or even his existence only opens further layers of uncertainty.
Narrative Complexity and Themes
Encircling this central mystery, the plot spirals into a complex web of secrets, digressions, and non sequiturs. These are interspersed with explicit sexual scenes that repeatedly bring the narrator back to the foundational moment of his devotion. The prose combines a breathless physicality with emotional abruptness, intensifying the surreal quality of the settings and encounters with an almost provocative instinct for shock. The style evokes the sensibilities of Ronald Firbank as if directed by John Waters, or Saki interpreted through a contemporary lens.
Characterization and Naming
Koestenbaum has long been fascinated by the significance of names, reminiscent of Dickens’s memorable character naming. However, in this novel, despite a cast of uniquely named characters, the two central figures—the lover and the rabbi—remain unnamed, referred to only by pronouns as in the title. This deliberate anonymity is revealed to be significant in the final section of the book.
Conclusion and Final Revelations
The inventive conclusion, spanning the last 20 pages, clarifies the novel’s deeper purpose. The narrative is not primarily concerned with the frustrating elusiveness of a single individual’s body. Instead, in a fugue-like culmination, the narrator’s obsessive quest to comprehend his beloved transforms into an original meditation on the unknowability inherent in any object of desire. Beyond this, it becomes a profound reflection on the acceptance of love’s inability to conquer death.
Readers need not endure the novel with reluctance; throughout all 188 chapters, Koestenbaum writes with the grace of an angel unafraid to descend to earthly realities. The provocative title may encourage more readers to engage with this distinctive and deeply thoughtful writer for the first time.
"The book’s central and anchoring fact – the overwhelming desire of a man who works as an antique furniture restorer for a man who works in a synagogue – is accepted as a given by every single character."
"Far from being style-for-style’s sake, this insistent and anxious formality is at the heart of the book’s uncanny life; a quite brilliant matching of style to subject."
"As in Balzac – or Proust, for that matter, another expert in the mechanics of obsession – it eventually turns out that almost all the characters have either slept with each other or are otherwise entangled."
"Like Proust’s Swann, he persuades himself that the key to his love object’s allure must lie not so much in their lovemaking as in some undisclosed emotional hinterland."
"Meanwhile, the furniture restorer’s sentences continue to combine physical breathlessness with emotional abruptness, spiking the slow-motion strangeness of their locations and encounters with an almost lascivious instinct for outrage."
"The whirlwind invention of the last 20 pages reveals why. As it turns out, the book isn’t really about the maddening elusiveness of an individual body; in a final, fugue-like recapitulation, the narrator’s obsessive desire to understand or unravel his beloved morphs into a gloriously original evocation of the unknowability of any object of desire."
