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A Novel
by Christopher Tradowsky
This tender, exuberant novel about a young man navigating coming of age in '90s San Francisco is for readers of Garth Greenwell and André Aciman.
Walter Simmering is searching for love and purpose in a city he doesn't realize is fading away—San Francisco in 1993, at the height of the AIDS epidemic and the dawn of the tech revolution. Out of college, out of the closet, and transplanted from the Midwest, Walter is irresistibly drawn from his shell when he meets Cary Menuhin and Sasha Stravinsky, a dynamic couple who live blithely beyond the boundaries of gender and sexuality. Witty and ultra-stylish, Cary and Sasha seem to have stepped straight out of a sultry film noir, captivating Walter through a shared obsession with cinema and Hollywood's golden age.
As the three embark on adventures across the city, filled with joie de vivre, their lively friendship evolves in unexpected ways. When Walter befriends Lawrence, a filmmaker and former child actor living with HIV, they pursue a film project of their own, with hilarious and tragic results.
Midnight at the Cinema Palace is a vibrant and nostalgic exploration of young souls discovering themselves amidst the backdrop of a disappearing city. Christopher Tradowsky's astonishing debut captures the essence of '90s queer culture and the complex lives of friends seeking an aesthetically beautiful and fulfilling way of life.
"Though he overstuffs the narrative with a few too many preciously quirky episodes, Tradowsky's film references are as finely tuned as his observations about relationships. Queer cinephiles will be especially enthralled." —Publishers Weekly
"Young movie lovers discover friendship, glamour, and heartache in 1990s San Francisco... Tradowsky's ornate novel is a love letter to a foggy, analog metropolis lit up with nightlife and art, queer friendship and desire, movie houses and day jobs, and 20-somethings aching to define themselves." —Kirkus Reviews
"How do you come to life as the city of your dreams disappears, person by person, around you? In Midnight at the Cinema Palace, you make art, fall in love with your friends, make each other laugh, and do what you can to keep the inevitable away. This is a brisk, animated novel about LGBTQ+ life in San Francisco in the late days before the internet changed everything. More than nostalgia, it speaks to this moment: Who might we envision ourselves to be?" —Paul Lisicky, author of Song So Wild and Blue: A Life With the Music of Joni Mitchell
"Midnight at the Cinema Palace is a funny, sensual coming-of-age novel, double-exposing the voyeuristic pleasures of an artist's life with the sorrowful wisdom that originates within creation." —Kyle Dillon Hertz, author of The Lookback Window
This information about Midnight at the Cinema Palace was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Christopher Tradowsky is a writer, artist, and art historian. He was awarded the 2023 J. Michael Samuel Prize from the Lambda Literary Foundation. He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. Midnight at the Cinema Palace is his debut novel.
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