My Lover, the Rabbi by Wayne Koestenbaum review – as fierce and strange as anything you’ll read this year

With echoes of Balzac and Proust, this tale of obsessive love evokes the dangers and delights of forbidden desire Wayne Koestenbaum has built himself a slow-burn reputation as one of America’s sharpest queer iconoclasts, but the title of his latest novel suggests Netflix-ready realism. Will My Lover, the Rabbi be a sober yet uplifting account of the conflict between religious orthodoxy and forbidden desire? Not a bit of it. The book’s central and anchoring fact – the overwhelming desire of a ...

By Neil Bartlett