The Town of Babylon – Alejandro Varela
Expectation: A dramedy about revisiting the people and places you left behind.
Reality: More politically focused than anticipated, there’s a sense of urgency and relatability in the text, especially for middle-aged queer men.
My Take:
“The Town of Babylon” is the type of novel that makes me want to scream at the top of my lungs for everyone to stop what they are doing and read it.
It’s a simple, character driven story that I found incredibly relatable — and you will too, if you have a complicated relationship with your hometown, aging parents and often find yourselves the lone blue dot in a sea of red.
Yes, this novel is full of politics, and even if you agree with most of what Alejandro Varela presents here, “Babylon” will still challenge your perceptions and make you question your complicity in the positive or negative trajectory of others’ lives.
Like, Andrés, the main character, I left my hometown at 18-years-old and never looked back. My parents moved away almost a decade ago, and my 20-year high school reunion was cancelled because of COVID-19.
Yet, I still dream about the place and its people.
I think about the ways in which the town shaped me. The things I hated and those that I miss. I’ve wondered, even before reading “Babylon,” what it would feel like to visit it again, but when I do there is a sense of coldness and detachment rather than excitement at touring the old haunts.
I’m not ashamed of where I am from — although I was for a period of time — but I also know that outside of nostalgia it holds little for me. “Babylon” proves that it may get better, but we also may never forget the little moments that made us sour on the place.
I can’t accurately describe why this novel hit me so hard, because it’s more about how it made me feel rather than how it was written. It’s part love letter and part condemnation to the American way of life. It’s a fascinating exploration of race, class and health inequities while also being an intimate love story. It is tonally similar to Ocean Vuong’s “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” — although Varela’s writing is less poetic.
For Andrés, or Andy, it’s his father’s failing health that brings him back from a nameless city to this nameless suburb. Andrés is also at a crossroads. Professional fulfilled, he’s reeling from his husband’s recent infidelity, his brother’s death from a heart attack at 32-years-old and the ways in which he feels his hometown may have held back his immigrant parents.
Outside of navigating old relationships, many rekindled at his high school reunion, Andrés spends the novel thinking — a lot. Honestly, I highlighted more sections in this novel than I probably have in any other this year.
I’ll never be able to fully understand the racial inequities that Varela presents in vivid and clear-eyed detail, but I do understand the need to code-switch and internalize situations and conversations for decades later. And, it’s those moments where I felt seen in the text.
Andrés is a compelling quasi-everyman that queer people as well as non-whites will be able to see themselves in. Although the men are given more to do here than the women, Rosario, his mother, and Phyllis, the mother of his classmate and former best friend Simone, are given interesting arcs.
The cast rounds out with Álvaro, his father; Ernesto/Henry, his deceased brother; Simone, his former best friend in a mental hospital; Jeremy, his high school boyfriend and first love; and Paul, a former classmate and minister with a dangerous secret. There is a depth to how Varela presents these characters – some initially appearing as supporting before given a chapter that delves into their background – that made this a page-turner.
I was most consumed by the relationships Andrés had with Jeremy, Simone and Rosario, but Paul became a character you hated yet sympathized with (to a point).
Varela takes different micro perspectives — economic and health inequity, systemic racism, homophobia, capitalism and recovery — and layers on macro-observations, since Andrés is a public health professional, to try to explain how we got here.
Each of the characters aren’t unhappy, but they aren’t fulfilled either and much of that is brought on by the American machine versus their own doing. The result is a work of fiction that at times reads like a collection of contemporary essays about American life.
I know not everyone will like this novel. It’s too in your face and a little heavy-handed at times, but if you’re willing to tackle something that will make you think – this is the way to go. It might be my favorite book of the year.
Rating (story): 5/5 stars
Rating (narration): N/A stars
Formats: eBook (personal library)
Dates read: August 29 – September 5, 2022
Multi-tasking: N/A
