Ostensibly a series of vignettes, 100 Boyfriends catalogs the sexual exploits of the unnamed Black, gay men that comprise its central characters. Not quite a novel and not quite a short story collection, its voice is similar to Purnell’s voice in interviews: surprising, irreverent, and at times simply hilarious-the same buzzwords I have no doubt will surface in most reviews of his work and for good reason. And the conventions of the book review may be too stuffy to do full credit to this book’s formless predilections. While racking my brain for some new genre under which this book might fall, the best I could come up with is graveyard of intimacies.ġ00 Boyfriends is a lively graveyard, though. The narrator’s boyfriends are the book’s ghosts and its ghosts are his boyfriends. In his latest offering- 100 Boyfriends-the two aren’t mutually exclusive. And then, elaborating on his answer: “A bunch of disruptive faggots.” When asked who he writes for in a recent interview, Brontez Purnell provided as good an answer as I’ve heard in years: “Ghosts” he said.
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