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The Lavender Rhino

Something Close to Nothing

Something Close to Nothing

$19.95 USD
$19.95 USD
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by Tom Pyun

Tags: Gay, POC and Queer

Featuring an interracial gay couple starting a family via surrogate, Tom Pyun's Something Close to Nothing is a dark and hilarious debut that explores what happens when we go after everything we want in life.

Winston Kang and Jared Cahill are traveling to Cambodia to meet the surrogate of their baby girl and witness her birth. The egg donor is Korean American, just like Wynn, and Jared, who is white, can't wait to meet his daughter and raise their beautiful, hip family. Named after Jared's favorite star (more Kramer vs. Kramer and Sophie's Choice, less Mamma Mia and Devil Wears Prada), Meryl will be a cool Bay Area kid. She will eat organic baby food, learn French, and attend Wellesley, Williams, or Wesleyan. But when Wynn bails on Jared and Meryl at the last minute to pursue his dream of becoming a hip-hop dancer, the master plan begins to crumble. Jared starts to panic that no one in his life can talk to Meryl about her period or what it's like to grow up as an Asian American person. Oceans away, Wynn is figuring out what it means to put himself first — auditioning for Misty Espinoza's comeback tour, organizing a Prince-themed flash mob, and reconnecting with his old friend, Nicole, in Nairobi, where they try to make sense of their weird but mostly single lives.

Everything's amazing, right?

Told in alternating points of view, Wynn and Jared explore the dark side of the very American idea of following one's dreams, whether it be pursuing a career in dance or having a biological child as a gay man, a la Andy Cohen, and Anderson Cooper. Along their messy tragi-comic journey, unresolved issues of race, identity, and privilege haunt them, pulling at the loose threads of their fantasies and raising the question of whether they will ultimately face themselves and grow up.

Written by the gifted and humorous Tom Pyun, Something Close to Nothing is a sardonic and addictive page-turner inspired by the author's personal experience building a non-traditional LGBTQ family.

"An engaging, globetrotting debut that captures the many highs and lows of creating the family of one's dreams. Full of warmth, insight, and attention to complicated truths." — Jung Yun, author of Shelter and O Beautiful

"The story is delightfully unpredictable, sophisticated about the complexities of race and class, and a thoroughly entertaining read. Pyun is a gifted writer with a flair for balancing pathos and humor. His characters are flawed in interesting ways that simultaneously engender anger and the urge to root for them. It's a fantastic debut."  — Toni Ann Johnson, author of Light Skin Gone to Waste and winner of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction.

"This is a mesmerizing debut novel. Something Close to Nothing is a candid, funny, and shocking dissection of the relationship between one of those gay couples who look perfect in their social media posts. Tom Pyun is writing about contemporary queer life with an honesty and depth that is astounding and welcomed. He has a talent for hitting us with gut punches that turn into belly laughs." — Rasheed Newson, author of My Government Means to Kill Me
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