FEBRUARY 2018 - AudioFile
Set in New York City at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, this audiobook focuses on four transgender or gay teens who run away from home, finding even poverty and the harsh city streets to be better than the rejection of their families. Narrator Christian Barillas’s respectful performance successfully navigates a potential obstacle course of stereotypes, starting with his authentic-sounding Spanglish and Puerto Rican accent, which solidly place this heartrending story in the Latino community. In addition, he deftly sidesteps cartoonish inflections while infusing the characters’ dialogue with an outward sassiness and a hint of their deep vulnerability. Listeners will long remember the experiences of these young people who are uncomfortable with the expectations of their birth gender or sexual preference and who want nothing more than acceptance and love. C.B.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
12/04/2017
Angie and Venus Xtravaganza were key members of the New York drag ball scene made famous to outsiders by the 1991 film Paris is Burning. Cassara’s debut novel imagines them as runaways fleeing impoverished, unsupportive, or abusive homes; ball circuit stars embodying the glamour they craved; loving sisters and mothers to needy gay teens and each other; and grieving, jonesing, dying women. There’s also a love story between Juanito and Daniel, younger runaways whom Angel (as she’s called here) and Venus take in and teach to walk a ball and work the street. Impressionistically covering the period from 1976 to 1993, the book is long on origin stories and grief, as lovers and friends die of AIDS, johns fail to keep their promises, and cocaine and crystal meth take their toll. What it lacks, besides the ball scene, which readers see little of, is the feeling that Cassara is adding something to the story. While readers who are too young to know this history may appreciate having access to a dramatic moment and some of the legendary figures who populated it, those for whom this is more familiar territory may find themselves wishing for more insight. Angel and Venus may get to tell their story here, but they largely come across the way they looked from afar: as strong yet fragile, street-smart, shade-throwing, generous, and ultimately doomed divas. (Feb.)
Booklist (starred review)
Cassara has done a superb job of reimagining a world that will be foreign and even exotic to many readers, while creating fully developed characters to populate it. The tone is singularly apposite....A compassionate story, which is altogether moving and unforgettable.
Bustle
This debut novel will absolutely blow you away.
Town & Country
Simultaneously tender and tragic, Cassara chronicles the House’s inception, its role in cultivating family for outcasts in the community, and spotlights the wholly original personalities that brought it to life.
Mashable
A novel so beautiful it’s hard to believe it’s a debut... As you meet each narrator, the book reveals the raw, heartbreaking stories behind the glamor we associate with the ballroom scene.
The Millions
Cassara immerses us in a New York that we may think we know from countless other novels and films, but which is, in fact, significantly more complex (and more urgently relevant to us today) than previously imagined.
the Oprah Magazine O
A vivacious debut.
Harper's Bazaar
Infused with glitz as well as heart, the story explores life as racial and sexual minorities—the pains and the triumphs, the grit and the thrills—in a way that feels personal, even for those who never walked the ballroom scene.
Buzzfeed
A heartbreaking novel that burns brightly.
Esquire
Cassara’s propulsive and profound first novel, finding one’s home in the world—particularly in a subculture plagued by fear and intolerance from society—comes with tragedy as well as extraordinary personal freedom.
Nylon Magazine
It’s impossible to not feel utterly transported, to feel the hum of the music in your cells, to vibrate with the energy of the time and place, with all its attendant exhilarating highs and devastating lows.
The Economist
Vivid and engaging. . . . The novel feels like an anthropological plunge into another era, enhanced by rhythmic, urban prose littered with slang and Spanglish.
Entertainment Weekly
“This is a definitive LGBTQ family story, of the sweep and intimacy that’s typical in family sagas while also steeped in the trauma and sass specific to its milieu.
Nami Mun
Underneath the grime and glitter, The House of Impossible Beauties is quietly about necessity and defiance, about love and death, about characters who ache to be alive and seen in a world that mirrors back nothing but rejection and violence.
Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
Joy and loss clutch hands in The House of Impossible Beauties. It is a tragic book, a lyrical book, a defiant book, and ultimately a loving book. The heroines and heroes hold fast to love and Cassara clearly has deep love for every character who struts across these pages.
Paul Harding
A marvelously serious, deep, artful, humane read. I’m really knocked out by this…[Cassara] managed to put actual, living, breathing human beings on the page….There’s so much downright gorgeous prose here, so many beautifully and precisely observed images, subjects, emotions. Beautiful because true.
New York Times Book Review
Vividly imagined. . . . Riveted by their stories, you are so struck by the Xtravaganza’s strength and determination, by their vibrant spirits and humor, by their creativity, by their sensitivity to beauty and their capacity to give and receive love.
O: the Oprah Magazine
A vivacious debut.
Library Journal
09/01/2017
One of the strongest books I've been fortunate to introduce at conference (United for Libraries' "Out and Proud: LGBTQ Literature," ALA annual), this debut opens in 1980 New York with 16-year-old Angel feeling trapped in her boy body, then weaves together the stories of various trans outsiders whom Angel collects into a family. Deft dialog, affecting characters, unsettling social truth, and language both gritty and luscious; with a 50,000-copy first printing.
FEBRUARY 2018 - AudioFile
Set in New York City at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic, this audiobook focuses on four transgender or gay teens who run away from home, finding even poverty and the harsh city streets to be better than the rejection of their families. Narrator Christian Barillas’s respectful performance successfully navigates a potential obstacle course of stereotypes, starting with his authentic-sounding Spanglish and Puerto Rican accent, which solidly place this heartrending story in the Latino community. In addition, he deftly sidesteps cartoonish inflections while infusing the characters’ dialogue with an outward sassiness and a hint of their deep vulnerability. Listeners will long remember the experiences of these young people who are uncomfortable with the expectations of their birth gender or sexual preference and who want nothing more than acceptance and love. C.B.L. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2017-10-11
A first-time novelist visits queer Harlem in the 1980s.Founded in 1982, the House of Xtravaganza was the first strictly Latinx house to join New York's ballroom community, the gay subculture brought to the popular consciousness in 1990 by Madonna's "Vogue" and the film Paris Is Burning. Although Cassara is careful to note that his debut is a work of imagination, this is a story about the House of Xtravaganza, the people who created it, and the people who made it their home. Angel—loosely based on Angie Xtravaganza, the first "mother" of the house—is 16 when the book starts, living in the Bronx and beginning the transition from "Angel the he" to "Angel the she." A chance encounter with the gorgeous Jaime leads to the acquisition of a silver dress and satisfying sex but, more importantly, a sense of possibility. The newly liberated Angel becomes an acolyte to (real-life) drag queen Dorian Corey, which leads Angel to an affair with Hector, who will establish the House of Xtravaganza (in both fiction and fact). The word "house" is both a nod to Paris ateliers and an acknowledgement that ball culture functioned as a home to people who were not welcome elsewhere, just as the titles "mother" and "father" have a special meaning to queer, cross-dressing, and transgender kids rejected by their families of origin. As Hector and Angel build their family of choice, the novel acquires new characters and perspectives, and it presents a wide-lens view of the joys and sorrows of a culture created by racial and sexual minorities. AIDS, of course, casts a terrible shadow over the community depicted here. But this is not, primarily, a social novel. In terms of tone and style, it's closer to Valley of the Dolls than Giovanni's Room, and this feels absolutely appropriate. Glamour is a refuge to Angel, Hector, and the kids to whom they give a home. Their stories deserve a bit of glitter.Fierce, tender, and heartbreaking.
