Open Throat, A Novel by Henry Hoke
File Under: Required Reading
I want to purchase a box of these books and give one to every queer person I love. If you are a queer reader, and if you’re reading this I’m guessing you are, please get this book immediately.
In all the arduous work of living a life swimming upstream, there must be joy. There must be laughter. And this mirth that makes the whole thing worth it has to happen while not gaslighting oneself about the fatigue and loneliness that comes with the territory. In the way that this book is both entertaining and restorative, Open Throat is queer medicine.
This brief, 156-page piece of fiction can be completed in a sitting if you’re such a reader. My friend Z, who turned me onto this title, suggested perhaps it is one of those books you could turn to any page randomly and take in the wisdom and bask in being seen through the voice of this mountain lion who lives underneath the Hollywood sign and observes humans. After I closed the small paperback, I reached out to Z and said, "It's like The Alchemist (by Paulo Coehlo), but queer!” They agreed.
Because being queer IS like that, isn’t it? Like living an alienated, hungry, sometimes confused, existence while watching other creatures appear to have things on lock. At one particularly funny moment in the narrative, our feline narrator is pretty sure he needs a therapist, given the snippets of conversations he overhears from the hikers he watches from his hiding places. Even though he isn’t sure what a therapist is. The mountain lion and his experience is a metaphor for being different, living adjacent, being an observer, and studying what appears to be the confusing ease of others.
I will not tell you what the words were, but will tell you the opening quote before the story begins grabbed me by the throat and let me know I was in the right place. The first line of chapter one doubled me over in laughter, and it went on from there. Aside from being reflective and restorative, I was entertained the whole time.
This book is one to keep on your shelf next to your other favorite spiritual companions, I promise.
