CINEMA LOVE

Samantha Tan's melodic voice carries listeners through a story that spans continents and decades. It follows a group of gay men and the women entangled in their lives from the cinema in Fuzhou, China, where they cruise and find refuge in the 1980s, to Manhattan's Chinatown through the present day. Tan expertly navigates a range of points of view, embodying characters of different genders with varying regional accents. Her performance is understated and full of nuance as she captures the strong sense of place and the bittersweet tone of Tang's prose. This is a unique and compelling debut novel about the ways the past haunts the present and the intertwined suffering and joy of queer people and those who love them. L.S. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine [Published: JULY 2024]