Queer

This chapter argues that two important developments have taken place in contemporary queer fiction. Novels depicting intersectional experiences, gender nonconformity or transitioning, and those examining the lives of LGBTQ+ people in less tolerant countries have become far more prominent. The chapter examines a range of twenty-first century literary fiction that deals with LGBTQ+ concerns. It utilizes queer as an umbrella term for what Annamarie Jagose calls both ‘a coalition of culturally marginal sexual self-identifications’ and also ‘a nascent theoretical model which has developed out of more traditional lesbian and gay studies’. The chapter looks at chronicles of contemporary queer life including Hanya Yanigahara’s A Little Life and Garth Greenwell’s What Belongs to You. It argues that they reignite past queer aesthetic modes: the Gothic’s linguistic and structural excess, and Marcel Proust and Henry James’s slowed down approach to time, respectively. The chapter also examines representations of the capaciousness of the modern family to withstand change and embrace queer identities.