Unfolding with a propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is an exquisitely plotted excavation of the depths of human desire and the darkness it can bring forth in us. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel, and Paul becomes increasingly afraid that he can never live up to what Julian expects of him.Īs their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence. Paul will stop at nothing to prove himself worthy of their friendship, because with Julian life is more invigorating than Paul could ever have imagined.

Paul sees Julian as his sole intellectual equal - an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. When he meets the worldly Julian in his freshman ethics class, Paul is immediately drawn to his classmate’s effortless charm. Sensitive, insecure, and incomprehensible to his grieving family, Paul feels isolated and alone. flickering over my prone body, my mouth hanging open with a slight string of drool flowing down onto the pillow. When Paul enters university in early 1970s Pittsburgh, it’s with the hope of moving past the recent death of his father. These Violent Delights Interview Aptly Micah Nemerever on Queer Villains, Jewishness, and Crime Interview by Quentin Greif My boyfriend often finds me sound asleep in our big bedroom in New Jersey with the T.V.

At the start of the novel, protagonist Paul Fleischer is transitioning from adolescence to young adulthood. The Secret History meets Lie with Me in Micah Nemerever’s compulsively enjoyable debut novel – a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence. These Violent Delights offers an insightful psychological reflection on insecurity and the lengths some white men will go to feel seen, to feel important, to feel loved. An O Magazine LGBTQ Book that Is Changing the Literary Landscape in 2020Īn Electric Lit Most Anticipated Debut of the Second Half of 2020Ī The Millions Most Anticipated Book of the YearĪ Paperback Paris Best New LGBTQ+ Books to Read This Year Selection

Paul and julian these violent delights