These Violent Delights

by Micah Nemerever, Michael Crouch (Read by)

Overview

An O Magazine.com LGBTQ Book That Is Changing the Literary Landscape in 2020 • An Electric Lit Most Anticipated Debut of the Second Half of 2020 • A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year • A Paperback Paris Best New LGBTQ+ Books To Read This Year Selection

The Secret History meets Lie with Me in Micah Nemerever's compulsively readable debut novel—a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence.

When Paul enters university in early 1970s Pittsburgh, it’s with the hope of moving past the recent death of his father. Sensitive, insecure, and incomprehensible to his grieving family, Paul feels isolated and alone. When he meets the worldly Julian in his freshman ethics class, Paul is immediately drawn to his classmate’s effortless charm.

Paul sees Julian as his sole intellectual equal—an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. Paul will stop at nothing to prove himself worthy of their friendship, because with Julian life is more invigorating than Paul could ever have imagined. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel, and Paul becomes increasingly afraid that he can never live up to what Julian expects of him.

As their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence.

Unfolding with a propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is an exquisitely plotted excavation of the depths of human desire and the darkness it can bring forth in us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781799941422
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/15/2020
Edition description:	Library Edition
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.50(h) x 5.00(d)

About the Author

Micah Nemerever studied art history and queer theory at the University of Connecticut, where he wrote his MA thesis on gender anxiety in the art of the Weimar Republic. He is a prolific home chef and an avid amateur historian of queer cinema. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Michael Crouch is an actor based in New York City. His audiobook narration has won the prestigious Audie Award for Best Narration, numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine, and Best of the Year accolades from Booklist, School Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly. He can also be heard on national commercials, cartoons, video games, and the animé series Pokémon XY and Yu-Gi-Oh! Arc-V.

Editorial Reviews

07/27/2020

Nemerever’s dark, inspired debut depicts a Leopold and Loeb–like thrill killing committed by two gay Jewish college students in 1970s Pittsburgh. Sensitive Paul Fleischer, an artist, comes from a working-class family and is grieving his father’s recent suicide. He easily falls under the spell of Julian Fromme, a rich psychology student who exudes wit and energy. As the young men become lovers, Paul’s family worries about the amount of time he spends with Julian, and his mother pleads with him to hang out with girls, while Paul resigns himself to taking what he can get from the withholding Julian (“If Julian were to love him, it would feel like something he deigned to do. It meant more to be needed”). Julian’s power over Paul becomes more intense after he uses Paul to break free of his own overbearing family. Soon the young men are imagining violent deaths (“How about a Helter Skelter kind of thing, wouldn’t that be fun? We could paint gibberish in blood on the walls,” Julian says), and they work their way up to kidnapping a stranger. The buildup digs into the why as much as the how, allowing Nemerever to chart an enthralling exploration of what drives these young men to violence. Fans of Patricia Highsmith will definitely want to take note of this promising writer. Agent: Caroline Eisenmann, Frances Goldin Literary Agency. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

A gorgeous and wickedly smart novel. I was so seduced by the dazzling love story of these two vulnerable young men I became an unwitting accomplice in their swerve toward violence. Nemerever has created a rich, engrossing, and morally complex book filled with dark truths and dangerous delights.

Christopher Bollen

Visceral, intimate, and all-consuming, this gutsy debut is both intellectual and fiercely animal. A chilling exploration into desire and infatuation that questions how well we ever really know our lovers—or ourselves. Nemerever’s propulsive, crystalline language and gutting insights make the pages fly by, hurtling you toward the inevitable, astounding ending.

Julia Fine

These Violent Delights is a captivating portrait of alienation and loneliness with the cool gaze of a Highsmith novel. Punctuated by arpeggios of violence and rage, Micah Nemerever has crafted a thrilling page-turner anchored in an examination of desire, love, and moral inquiry.

Patty Yumi Cottrell

"Nemerever's darkly shrewd debut exists in that hazy liminal space between desire and obsession, where the vagaries of a relationship come shaded with the constant threat of cruelty."

Michelle Hart

These Violent Delights is an utterly captivating fever dream of a novel whose tone and atmosphere will haunt you long after you finish. More haunting still is the skill with which Micah Nemerever reveals to us the lengths we will go to in order to be known, to be seen, to be understood. A thrilling first novel.

Brandon Taylor

Few novelists make an impression as quickly and effectively as Micah  Nemerever does in his stirring debut, an explosively erotic and erudite thriller. Kicking off with an electrifying prologue… readers will keep turning pages in desperate pursuit of the tension-breaking relief that can only come from seeing the story to its conclusion.

Stephenie Harrison

Readers who need some thrill in their life will find this page-turner very binge-able. Micah Nemerever showcases a lot of skills on the pages, but it is the intricate plotting that propels this novel forward.

Adam Vitcavage

"As unsettling as it is enthralling, These Violent Delights will engulf you: first in the intoxication of obsession, then in its toxic consequences. Micah Nemerever's debut is a beautiful portrait of intimacy, desperation, and the damage that damaged hearts can cause. It shattered me."

Robin Wasserman