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psocoptera) wrote2024-11-05 02:40 pm
psocoptera) wrote2024-11-05 02:40 pm
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The Pairing
The Pairing, Casey McQuiston, 2024 romance novel. Exes meet up again on a food and wine tour of western Europe. Your enjoyment of this book will likely depend heavily on how much you enjoy reading about other people eating and going places - for me, I do basically none of the things lovingly described in this book (I don't drink wine, don't like fruit, can't handle much sugar, dislike organized tours and tourguides, struggle with meeting new people, don't hook up with strangers) so for me the whole thing was a sort of vicarious vacation in a life so alien it was practically science-fictional. (Although I did enjoy it when they went places I've been like Barcelona or Florence and I got to play "oh, I've been there! I've seen that thing!" along with their tourism.) Early on I was tense because McQuiston has a history of writing drunk scenes and there was clearly going to be a lot of drinking in this book, but in fact the characters were such connoisseurs and experienced drinkers that I was able to stop worrying and trust them to not embarrass themselves. As implied, both members of the central couple have a variety of hookups with other characters, played various ways (competitiveness, voyeurism, substitution) which is a trope I enjoy and don't see in a lot of romance novels. McQuiston did a good job of making it part of the emotional journey of the couple without getting into un-fun jealousy/territoriality. (But if you prefer strict monogamy in your romance this is probably not the book for you.)
Spoilery additional comment: I didn't know much about this book other than that it was the new McQuiston, so I had a funny moment when I started reading and was like "wait a minute, is this *het*??" However, it seemed pretty clear pretty early on that Theo (who is the first-person POV for the first half of the book) might have been AFAB but had some gender going on, and was never described in a feminine way, and then McQuiston spells it out for us in a discussion about E.M. Forster: ""I like reading E.M. Forster because it's always gay, even though this one is about a man and a woman," he says. "Do you know how sometimes when you read or watch or listen to something, there's a... resonant homosexual flavor? Not even in anything the characters are explicitly doing or saying, but in the voice, or how the flowers are described or a character looks at a painting, or the way they see and react to the world."" Later in the second half Theo clarifies for Kit (the POV of the second half) that they're nonbinary, and Kit's POV does a smooth pronoun-switch to "they", which was nice, but honestly even before that I think McQuiston was doing a good job answering "yes" to "can a M/F couple be queer". I mean, I'm sure a certain amount of that was that both characters were explicitly and actively bisexual, but it also just never felt particularly *het* in the sense of "feeling like I was reading a het romance".
(There is a perennial controversy in fanfic-fandom over whether it's ever okay to write a canonically M/M or F/F couple as a M/F couple, like, is that an erasure of their queerness. I personally think it's really interesting to see what happens when you "reintroduce" heterosexuality to a queer baseline but it's also true that I'm basically always interested in turning gender in some new direction and shaking it to see what will fall out. Anyways, that is another context in which one might find queer M/F, like, I think Vanyel Ashkevron is always already queer even if you're writing a story with always-a-girl!Tylendal, and that fic will have "the resonant homosexual flavor", a phrase I might introduce to the controversy if I ever end up talking about it somewhere...)
Spoilery additional comment: I didn't know much about this book other than that it was the new McQuiston, so I had a funny moment when I started reading and was like "wait a minute, is this *het*??" However, it seemed pretty clear pretty early on that Theo (who is the first-person POV for the first half of the book) might have been AFAB but had some gender going on, and was never described in a feminine way, and then McQuiston spells it out for us in a discussion about E.M. Forster: ""I like reading E.M. Forster because it's always gay, even though this one is about a man and a woman," he says. "Do you know how sometimes when you read or watch or listen to something, there's a... resonant homosexual flavor? Not even in anything the characters are explicitly doing or saying, but in the voice, or how the flowers are described or a character looks at a painting, or the way they see and react to the world."" Later in the second half Theo clarifies for Kit (the POV of the second half) that they're nonbinary, and Kit's POV does a smooth pronoun-switch to "they", which was nice, but honestly even before that I think McQuiston was doing a good job answering "yes" to "can a M/F couple be queer". I mean, I'm sure a certain amount of that was that both characters were explicitly and actively bisexual, but it also just never felt particularly *het* in the sense of "feeling like I was reading a het romance".
(There is a perennial controversy in fanfic-fandom over whether it's ever okay to write a canonically M/M or F/F couple as a M/F couple, like, is that an erasure of their queerness. I personally think it's really interesting to see what happens when you "reintroduce" heterosexuality to a queer baseline but it's also true that I'm basically always interested in turning gender in some new direction and shaking it to see what will fall out. Anyways, that is another context in which one might find queer M/F, like, I think Vanyel Ashkevron is always already queer even if you're writing a story with always-a-girl!Tylendal, and that fic will have "the resonant homosexual flavor", a phrase I might introduce to the controversy if I ever end up talking about it somewhere...)