Synopsis
From Chuck Tingle, author of the USA Today bestselling Camp Damascus, comes a new heart-pounding story about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you dead.
Misha is a jaded scriptwriter who has been working in Hollywood for years, and has just been nominated for his first Oscar. But when he’s pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale―”for the algorithm”―Misha discovers that it’s not that simple.
As he is haunted by his past, and past mistakes, Misha must risk everything to find a way to do what’s right―before it’s too late.
Review
A huge thank you to Tor Nightfire and NetGalley for the eARC!
In a world where art is on the brink of extinction thanks to the emergence and development of artificial intelligence, there has never been a timelier novel than Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays. Write what you know. This is often the advice given to any burgeoning writer on the cusp of something great. For Misha Byrne, he’s written what he knows, damn good and well. His TV series Travelers is up for award consideration, yet the production company is calling for one thing. To kill off the gay leads or let them live straight. Their reasoning? The predictive cost-benefit analysis algorithm says so. While Misha is quick to fight this idea, threats begin to emerge in the unlikeliest of forms demanding that Misha bury his gays.
Blurring the lines of fact and fiction, Tingle takes us on an entertaining ride through his fictional version of Hollywood, although I’m not fully convinced there isn’t more truth than not. The inspiration for the fictional shows Tingle crafts feels like a fun game of “I Spy,” calling to mind media such as Supernatural, The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Truman Show. Misha Byrne (Misha Collins x David Byrne?) has gained what many deem as commercial success for his writing abilities, his shows and movies always balancing between the status quo and featuring a welcome change of underrepresented leads. However, this external struggle of being forced to suppress his original idea is mirrored through his inner strife as a gay man still working through his own trauma. There’s a brilliant form of characterization that Tingle utilizes to give life to Misha, someone who is rallying against those working to keep him down.
And the arrival of very real threats to Misha and his friends is quite terrifying indeed, providing a meta twist on the haunting qualities of your own creations, your own proverbial ghosts. Just imagine if 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit was a smidge darker, the limits of violence nonexistent. In fact, Misha’s creation (or I guess Tingle’s) of Mrs. Why, an shadowy female figure with great power, generated serious moments of fear that were palpable on the page. Yes, Bury Your Gays reads as a horror novel for these haunting creations and the violence enacted, but moreover, Tingle institutes an existential state of dread regarding our very real world through this novel. The presence of AI is all too large and all too consuming in a society that’s obsessed with capitalism and monetization.
Speaking of timeliness, there has never been a better moment to pick up a book that shares an invigorating narrative of authenticity such as this. Misha’s internal struggles, which are exacerbated by the very real threats around him, tap into a deeper philosophy of acceptance and vulnerability. Reading Bury Your Gays harkened the same message as Jane Schoenbrun’s latest movie, I Saw the TV Glow: “There is still time.” There is still time to find yourself, there is still time to make peace with your past, and there is still time to live authentically. Chuck Tingle’s greatest missive is that “love is real,” the idea that hinges upon opening yourself to the possibility of joy and acceptance through authenticity. The ways in which Misha’s boyfriend Zeke and best friend Tara are depicted in this story embody of this idea. These main relationships in proximity to Misha don’t need to thrive off dysfunction or trauma to read as noteworthy. They simply are through the merits of their goodness, of their love. Bury Your Gays indeed proves that love is real even in the face of the bleak, seemingly uncaring world around us for these very reasons.
A refreshing dive into the meta form of horror, Bury Your Gays walks a fine line of delivering deep-seated dread while still imparting tones of hope. As with Camp Damascus, Chuck Tingle argues the greatest evils come in the form of suppression of self, a life lived in a valley of rejection. Utilizing horror in this way feels like the perfect opportunity for despair, yet Tingle never leaves us in a state of darkness. After all, love is real.
Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle releases on July 9th from Tor Nightfire.
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