Gays Reading Podcast
October Book Club: Alejandro Varela (Middle Spoon)
In this spoiler-free conversation, host Jason Blitman talks to author Alejandro Varela, about his book MIDDLE SPOON, the October Gays Reading Book Club pick with Allstora.
Press
Audible
Editors Select: September 2025
Audiobook Review by Jerry Portwood. "These days, it can seem as if polyamory has caught on with surprising alacrity. But when you dig deeper, most people quickly reply: 'I could never do that; I'd be too jealous!' Left unsaid is that they probably wouldn't have much sympathy for your split with a lover if you already have a happy marriage, kids, and a great life. Alejandro Varela takes on the nature of queer love and open relationships with sly humor and panache. Part epistolary email breakup novel, part social critique of liberal, bourgeois values, Middle Spoon investigates the messiness of heartbreak in all its contemporary complexity."
Book Riot
The Queer Polyamorous Lit-Fic Novel I Can't Stop Thinking About
Book Review by Susie Dumond. "What we don't talk about as much in our visions of a free love utopia, though, is polyamorous heartbreak... That's what Alejandro Varela asks in his poignant, funny, delightfully eccentric new novel Middle Spoon... Our dude is a mess. And I adore him. For all his eccentricities and insufferable quirks, I can't get enough of him... Middle Spoon playfully explores the anxieties, joys, and uncertainties of modern queer love while also confronting the difficulties of trying to be a good partner, parent, and person in today's chaotic world."
Book Riot
The Best New Book Releases Out September 9, 2025
"The unnamed narrator of Middle Spoon has a loving husband and two incredible kids—and he's nursing a heartbreak no one in his life seems to understand. While his husband is supportive of him being polyamorous, he doesn't see why he's so hurt by the breakup with his boyfriend. To try to process, the narrator writes endless unsent emails to his ex. These transcripts skewer modern 'rules' of love and heartbreak."
Literary Hub
15 Novels You Need to Read This Fall
"This novel is a spiral, carrying readers down, down, down into the uncomfortable depths of heartbreak... I love Varela's style, which manages to capture a certain guy (read: hand-wringing, over-educated, PMC elder Millennial flirting with socialism) in a light more precise and endearing than certain snider peers have chosen. Our protagonist feels, lives, and thinks through his ethical dilemmas in the macro-world even as he flops around tortured in the mini-one... A very human and painfully contemporary project."
W Magazine
18 Must-Read Books for Fall, From New Releases to Timeless Favorites
"Varela has delivered an epistolary polyamory novel about a queer couple in Brooklyn. In it, the letter-writer has a fascinating need to calculate the incalculable—for example, measuring the grief of a breakup. Varela's analysis of gay life in New York is delightful, and just this side of withering."
The Boston Globe
Boston Globe: Story behind the book
"Alejandro Varela charmed us with his 2022 debut, 'The Town of Bablyon,' which became a finalist for the National Book Award. His new novel, 'Middle Spoon' (Viking) ponders the difficulty of living through a breakup from a lover when you've already got a spouse, kids, and a seemingly perfect life. Nobody but Varela could pull off this decidedly modern examination of polyamory, family, individual neurosis, and pop culture. A multifaceted gem of a novel."
Autostraddle
Our Most Anticipated Queer Books for September 2025
"The narrator of this polyamory novel has a husband, two children, a comfortable life, and a hot young boyfriend. But the boyfriend dumps him, and heartbreak is difficult to navigate as he butts up against a world that still doesn't fully have the tools and language for polyamorous relationships. The story is full of heart and humor."
Book Riot
The Best New Books of September, According to Indie Booksellers
"Middle Spoon playfully explores the anxieties, joys, and uncertainties of modern queer love while also confronting the difficulties of trying to be a good partner, parent, and person in today's chaotic world. It's playful yet deep, contemplative yet hilariously entertaining. You'll love spending a few hours in the head of this unforgettable protagonist."
IndieBound
Middle Spoon in the September Indie Next list
Middle Spoon was selected as one of IndieBound's "Indie Next" books to read, based on nominations from independent booksellers across the country!
BookPage
Book Review: Middle Spoon
Book Review by Thane Tierney. "Alejandro Varela's funny, perceptive literary love story poses uncomfortable and universal questions about the nature of relationships and how best to navigate them. In one of his earliest emails, the narrator ruminates: “Maybe there’s something worthwhile in unorthodox relationships and atypical family structures. Maybe the world should adapt to us and not us to it.” His nearly unshakable faith in the viability of this belief forms the beating heart of this funny, perceptive and ultimately gratifying love story. "
Bay Area Reporter
Fall books roundup 2025, part 1
"It's all about the melodrama, the trials, and the trouble of a particularly messy polyamorous open relationship in Varela's latest, a triumph of wit, wisdom, and emotional awareness. This is a writer who knows about and is unafraid of spotlighting the complex inner trappings of contemporary unorthodox queer couplings."
The Washington Post
A fall preview for readers of all kinds
"'I wouldn't have thought it possible for me at this age and at this otherwise fruitful moment in my life to plumb a new low,' says the narrator of Varela's second novel. He is a 43-year-old living in Brooklyn with his husband and two children. It's an open marriage, and the narrator has been recently devastated by a younger lover, Ben, ending their relationship. The novel is told in a series of intimate, funny, thoughtful, occasionally unhinged letters to Ben."
The New York Times
Alejandro on Edmund White
Colleagues and admirers of Edmund White reflect on his legacy.
CUNY TV
Alejandro on CUNY's Book it show
What does it mean to navigate a country as a visitor while building a future for the next generation? On Breaking Books @isabeljojournalism sat down with @drovarela to talk about his powerful short story collection, The People Who Report More Stress.
TODAY
50 books we can't wait to read in 2025
Alejandro's forthcoming novel Middle Spoon mentioned as one of the "Books to read in September 2025" on TODAY!
The Millions
A Year in Reading: Alejandro Varela
The Millions's Year in Reading interviews Alejandro. "YIR gathers together some of today's most exciting writers, thinkers, and tastemakers to share the books that shaped their year."
Wild Precious Life Podcast
The People Who Report More Stress with Alejandro Varela
In this episode, Annmarie and Alejandro talk about social justice, online dating, and whether writing fiction can help foster the collective liberation of our society.
Publisher's Weekly
Best Fiction Books of 2023
The People Who Report More Stress is a Publisher's Weekly Best Books of 2023!
Los Bookies Podcast
How Alejandro Wants to be Remembered
In the first ever episode of "Los Bookis," AGG and Sergio Lopez sit down with Alejandro Varela, to discuss his latest book, "The People Who Report More Stress." They dig deep into his work, his job at the US Open, outings to gay bars as a young man, capitalism v. working class issues, what Alejandro would be like if he was on the apps, what we should be advocating for at all times, who he wants to play Eduardo and Gus if there was a movie adaptation, and how he wants to be remembered.
The New York Times
In These Stories, Society Lets Individuals Down Again and Again
Alejandro Varela's The People Who Report More Stress is a master class in analyzing the unspoken…. Varela illuminates our society's Gordian knots with a seemingly effortless wit and empathy.
Split Lip Magazine
"Catharsis Shouldn't Happen Too Often": a conversation with Alejandro Varela
"It might seem reckless of me to deem National Book Award finalist Alejandro Varela's The People Who Report More Stress one of the best story collections of the year when it's the first I've read. But here's the thing: Varela's collection does everything right. The interconnected stories vary greatly in subject and style, but all deal with the anxieties of people living in the margins."
Chicago Review of Books
"An Inventive and Surprising Collection"
Alejandro Varela is a singular voice, a brilliant fiction writer whose work is wholly original, managing to be both important and completely entertaining.
Electric Literature
Alejandro Varela on Why Gay Sex Doesn't Make You Queer
The National Book Award finalist illustrates the fallacy of American social mobility in "The People Who Report More Stress"
Edelweiss
Edelweiss author Q&A
Alejandro discusses The People Who Report More Stress, his new collection of interconnected short stories that examines the impact of stress and anxiety on those living on the margins and the ways that—in a society defined by hierarchies—success does not translate to health and happiness.
The Boston Globe
Book Review: National Book Award finalist Alejandro Varela renders the neurotic complexity of cosmopolitan life with humor and pathos
"The People Who Report More Stress is a smartly curated collection that gets better as it goes along, building to the epiphanies missing in the earlier stories. Varela's witty, observant prose lifts each of these stories, even if the premises are decidedly grounded in real world and contemporary concerns. There's a wisdom and lightness to Varela's work that nudges us toward the conclusion that our divisions, while there may be many, can be mended."
Them
These Stories Explore the Complex Stress of Being Queer and Latinx in New York City
"Alejandro Varela's new story collection [The People Who Report More Stress] is a prismatic engagement with class, race, and identity."
BookPage
BookPage: The People Who Report More Stress review
"With biting humor, a sharp eye for the weird details that define places and relationships, a delightful sense of play and a lot of heart, he examines the intersecting lives of a group of mostly queer and Latinx New York City residents."
Los Angeles Times
How the Salvadoran diaspora became a literary juggernaut
"The Town of Babylon," a debut novel by Salvadoran Colombian Alejandro Varela, follows a queer man confronting his past during his 20th high school reunion in his suburban hometown. Varela's second book, "The People Who Report More Stress," a short-story collection, will be out this April.
Publishers Weekly
The People Who Report More Stress - Starred Review
"Varela follows up The Town of Babylon, a finalist for the National Book Award, with a searing collection about gentrification, racism, and sexuality. […] Varela provides invaluable insight on the ways stress impacts the characters' lives, and how they persevere. Readers will be floored."
PEN America
The Town of Babylon Longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award!
The Town of Babylon was longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award!
Multiple Publications
Best books of 2022 roundup
The Town of Babylon made it into a few year-end best-of lists! The Boston Globe's best books of 2022, Los Angeles Public Library's best of 2022: fiction, Library Journal's best literary fiction of 2022
AudioFile
Three Audiobooks About the Communities that Shape Us
"I first read Alejandro Varela's National Book Award finalist debut, The Town of Babylon, back in March. When I reread it on audio a few weeks ago, I was struck by how well, and how truthfully, Varela captures the interlocking stories of complex communities."
Sierra
6 Must-Read Books for Your Fall Reading List
"Alejandro Varela's National Book Award–nominated The Town of Babylon has that same deep sense of body and place, but all wrapped up in a landscape that isn't."
Vox
All of the 2022 National Book Award finalists, read and reviewed
Nisha Chittal, managing editor at Vox, reviews The Town of Babylon.
National Book Foundation
Alejandro Varela at the 2022 National Book Awards Finalist Reading
Watch Alejandro read an excerpt from The Town of Babylon.
The Boston Globe
Alejandro Varela on becoming a serious reader
Amy Sutherland interviews Alejandro for the Boston Globe's Bibliophiles column.
The Today Show
The best books by Latinx authors to read this month and always
"The Town of Babylon is Alejandro Varela's smart, tender and very queer debut novel."
The New York Times
Here Are This Year's National Book Award Finalists
Twenty five books, spread across five categories, were named on Tuesday, including fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The winners will be announced next month.
Los Angeles Review of Books
Empathy and Solidarity: On Alejandro Varela's "The Town of Babylon"
"Varela took some time to chat with me about issues of mental health, the myth of meritocracy, and the importance of dismantling systems of oppression."
The Atlantic
Alejandro Varela on the Reality of Being an Anxious Writer
"All illness, including mental illness, is exacerbated by a lack of community, by feeling alone."
Bloom
Storytelling and Public Health: Q & A with Alejandro Varela
Public health and fiction share a desire to elicit reactions… both examine experiences in order to better understand human motivations and actions, as well as the systems that dictate our decision-making.
Apogee
"Writing, I Can't Waste Time": Alejandro Varela & the Political Public Health Novel
In an interview with Executive Editor Alexandra Watson, Varela discusses the inspirations behind the novel - his experiences growing up in a white-majority suburb, and how studying and working in public health illuminated his writing and understanding of the "American Dream."
Latino Book Review
Three Questions for Alejandro Varela Regarding His Debut Novel, The Town of Babylon
"The Town of Babylon is a big-hearted, intricate, and daring debut novel that creates a fully-realized, imperfect hero who confronts our country's great failings while discovering the fragile beauty that lurks beneath the surface of human connections. There is an assuredness to Varela's writing, a quality usually observed in authors who have a dozen books to their name. Simply put, this is perfectly crafted novel from a truly talented writer."