UNEDITED

A doorstopper iteration of the co-published Edited (2022) with all the excised sex, alternate pasts and dystopian futures, sex, authorial commentary, metaphorically significant journeys, and sex left in.

When deeply lovestruck teen Mike’s efforts to change the past and win back his less-attached lover, Philomel, just make things worse, he sets out to argue the author into a major revision. Along with plenty of hot bedroom scenes, the page count balloons with duplicate and disordered chapters of disastrous do-overs plus point-of-view switches that allow supporting cast members to weigh in. Not to mention a set-piece quest that takes Mike and companions through subway tunnels to a ruined city that only those who have lost in love can enter. Lest he be accused of creeping romanticism, the author abandons this story partway along to tell his own, shouldering his way in to assert godlike powers. He banishes several significant characters, analyzes how his life and earlier works have informed this one, and professes to help readers get over their own first heartbreaks by telling Mike that he’s too young to be really in love. The author’s attempts to insulate himself from criticism for thin characterizations (notably Phil’s), with, for instance, an ironic reference to his “Male Gaze” and a scene in which Mike is mortified by the sudden realization that his lifelong best friend is Black (the rest of the cast presents White), look like afterthoughts in what reads more like a ponderous, messy archive than a perceptive study on love and loss.

A sprawling, cantankerous self-exploration.