Middle Spoon: A Novel

by Alejandro Varela

Overview

“Middle Spoon subverts the ordinary novel with intelligence and vulnerability. . . . Varela has made a sly, analytical opera of the heart.” —Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less and Less Is Lost

“A rollicking delight! . . . Varela asks provocative questions about the shape of family and the nature of love.” —Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Crush

One of TODAY’s 50 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2025 · Named a Must-Read Book of Fall 2025 by Town & Country, Lit Hub, and W Magazine

A whipsmart, blazingly funny novel about heartbreak, unconventional love, and the way society could be, from National Book Award finalist Alejandro Varela

The narrator of Middle Spoon appears to be living the dream: He has a doting husband, two precocious children, all the comforts of a quiet bourgeois life—and a sexy younger boyfriend to accompany him to farmers markets and cocktail parties. But when his boyfriend abruptly dumps him, he spirals into heartbreak for the first time and must confront a world still struggling to understand polyamorous relationships. Faced with the judgment of friends and the sting of rejection, he’s left to wonder if sharing a life with both his family and his lover could ever truly be possible.

With a big heart and just the right dose of the anxieties that define the modern era, Middle Spoon skewers the unspoken rules we still live by—from taboos around intimacy to the shortcomings of Oscar season, pop culture, and gluten-free food—offering a surprising perspective on love, loss, and reinvention. Equal parts heart-wrenching and uproariously funny, Middle Spoon is for anyone who has longed, nursed a broken heart, or grappled with love at its messiest.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593835180
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/09/2025
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Alejandro Varela’s (he/him) debut novel, The Town of Babylon, was a finalist for the National Book Award. His short story collection, The People Who Report More Stress, was one of Publishers Weekly’s best works of fiction in 2023, a finalist for the International Latino Book Awards, and longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize, The Story Prize, and the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award. Varela, who is based in New York, is an editor-at-large of Apogee Journal and holds a master’s in public health from the University of Washington.

Editorial Reviews

Nothing gets away from Alejandro Varela; every thought and detail, emotion and memory is taken apart to the atoms. The result is obsessive, explosive, heartbreaking, funny, and brilliant. Middle Spoon subverts the ordinary novel with intelligence and vulnerability, and with its arias of love and choruses of doubt, Varela has made a sly, analytical opera of the heart.”
—Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less and Less Is Lost

“What a beautiful, timely novel. From the very first page, I found myself exhaling—awed by Varela’s sharp wit, originality, and the extraordinary care and intensity he brings to every sentence. He truly leaves it all on the page.”
—Jacqueline Woodson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Remember Us

“Nobody but Varela could pull off this decidedly modern examination of polyamory, family, individual neurosis, and pop culture. A multifaceted gem of a novel.”
—Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe

“Intimate, funny, thoughtful.”
—The Washington Post

“[Middle Spoon] tackles age-old issues—heartbreak, aspiration, disappointment—with a decidedly modern twist. . . . What does heartbreak look like when it’s matched with a life that most people think is perfect? Pick this book up to find out.”
—Town & Country

“Is there any better companion to our quaking world than this bright light of book? Fiercely funny, intelligent, unhinged, and humane, it stares right into the abyss with you, pointing out all there is still left to love.”
—Mira Jacob, author of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations

“What a rollicking delight! In capturing the pain of heartbreak through the lens of a neurotic narrator, Alejandro Varela asks provocative questions about the shape of family and the nature of love. Not only does he pull all that off, but he does it in the epistolary form while digressing into political theory, quantum entanglement, and gay nightlife; and proving frequently hilarious. A triple-axel of a novel.”
— Ada Calhoun, New York Times−bestselling author of Crush

“The charming Alejandro Varela dares us with his utopian one-sided epistolary of a man who wants it all: a husband, a boyfriend, a trans kid, great real estate, and a membership in Brooklyn DSA. To some, perhaps a woke nightmare, to others the gluten-free bourgeois American dream. A vulnerable, nerdy, needy, and charismatic argument for the new novel of the age of chaos, where happiness can only exist at home, and so it must.”
—Sarah Schulman, author of Let the Record Show

“Winking and elliptical, Alejandro Varela’s Middle Spoon tells the story of a man trying desperately––and despairingly––to build a life whose conceits feel at once historically inevitable and on the brink of collapse. Like all scorned lovers, his narrator is a paranoid reader of reality: obsessive, dogged, zealous, terrified. Amid the romantic and familial restructuring, life begins, ends, and begins again. A gripping work of domestic fiction that freaks the emotional constraints of the genre.”
—Maya Binyam, author of Hangman

“Varela’s analysis of gay life in New York is delightful.”
—W Magazine

“A triumph of wit, wisdom, and emotional awareness. . . . This is yet another example of [Varela’s] wizardry with plot and prose and the many varietal forms that relationships, whether exquisite or malevolent, can take. This is a writer who knows about and is unafraid of spotlighting the complex inner trappings of contemporary unorthodox queer couplings.” —Bay Area Reporter

“Middle Spoon continues [Varela’s] stylish voyage across the rocky seas of young and young-ish modern love. ... Opening pages promise extremely delightful sentences, itchily close-to-home lifestyle critique, and a heart-forward analysis of the conundrum that is contemporary mating.”
—LitHub, “Most Anticipated Books of 2025, Part Two”

“[Varela] poses uncomfortable and universal questions about the nature of relationships and how best to navigate them. . . . A funny, perceptive, and ultimately gratifying love story.”
—BookPage

“[Middle Spoon] explores the beautiful complexity of unorthodox, progressive family dynamics with tenderness and humor in equal measure. . . . A touching yet provocative queer love story about defying societal expectations.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Varela’s subversive and generous novel considers the sting of rejection and heartbreak from the perspective of its married narrator.”
—The Millions

“A refreshingly candid tale of modern love.”
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

2025-05-30
A married man in an open relationship grieves his first breakup.

National Book Award finalist Varela’s new novel is told primarily through letters from an unnamed narrator to his former boyfriend. At the behest of one of his therapists, he begins drafting the emails in an effort to navigate their sudden breakup. The narrator, who has never felt heartbreak before, is left entirely unmoored and devastated. The novel’s seemingly straightforward conceit begins to shift as the rest of the narrator’s life comes into focus: He is happily married to his husband, has two children (one of whom is nonbinary), lives in Brooklyn, has an active social life, and works as a public health researcher and professor. Until recently, he was also in a polyamorous relationship with Ben, who likewise lives in Brooklyn and is nearly a decade younger. A whirlwind romance that deepened quickly into love, their relationship was great until the moment Ben dumped the narrator unceremoniously. Nearly swallowed by grief, he fills his overwhelmingly vulnerable letters with sorrow, pining, obsessive thoughts, anxiety, tangents, gay history, therapy speak, pop-culture diatribes, and everything in between. In one of the earliest emails, the narrator posits: “Maybe there’s something worthwhile in unorthodox relationships and atypical family structures. Maybe the world should adapt to us and not us to it.” Brushing up against social norms, the narrator dreams of a world that is not quite ready for them. In one letter, he remembers the half-serious joke his husband made about him wearing a T-shirt that says “My husband knows I’m cheating on him.” In another, he writes to his son about the bittersweet reality of being pioneers: “Those of us perched on the tips of branches have unique viewpoints of the forest.” The novel explores the beautiful complexity of unorthodox, progressive family dynamics with tenderness and humor in equal measure.

A touching yet provocative queer love story about defying societal expectations.

Kirkus Reviews