THE DIARY OF A SUGARBABY

In Gagliastro’s dystopian novel, a young nonbinary person fights for survival when the United States is overtaken by a totalitarian government.

Before the advent of the Divided, an oppressive regime that institutes a culture of rape and mandatory sexual slavery, Dime was a smart, perceptive student. Kicked out of the house at age 16 for wearing a dress, he nonetheless got through college and even spent time in France as a translator. But the burden of student loans and low salaries took its toll, and he looked for “sugar daddies” to help financially. Dime identifies as queer and nonbinary but says he can pass for a straight, cisgender male. When the United States is hit with a piece of reactionary legislation called “the Bill,” fascism reigns, resulting in scores of deaths, mainly among LGBTQ+ people and racial minorities. Dime survives as people in this hellish reality are divided into the categories of Minors and Elders, based on age. Minors are poor and middle-class; Elders purchase Minors at auction and keep them as sexual slaves. (“When the Law allows you to do something, more people do it than you would expect.”) Dime has had seven sugar daddies in the past and is now on his third Elder. Minors are executed after serving their third Elder, putting Dime in a precarious position—but a rumor that the West Coast is still free offers a glimmer of hope. Gagliastro’s chilling novel about a nightmarish future pushes right-wing politics to terrifying extremes and tells a raw but perceptive story about the resulting victims. The viciousness of the regime is over the top, and some of the descriptions of violence and degradation are excessive. But the bulk of the novel provides first-person insights into being queer, before and after the revolution, that are razor sharp, timely, and written with a great deal of thought behind them. Dime is in an impossible situation, but he’s a dynamic, enterprising character whose perceptiveness about the world elevates the story to an impressive, convincing level.

A frightening novel about an unthinkable future elevated by a very sophisticated protagonist.