All the World Beside by Garrard Conley is a queer historical fiction novel set in 18th-century Puritan New England (3.25/5 stars)

All the World Beside by Garrard Conley is a queer historical fiction novel set in 18th-century Puritan New England.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. I borrowed the audiobook from my library, as read by Pete Cross. I think he did a great job overall, and I inhaled this book in one sitting. It’s a little dense, so I followed along with my physical copy while listening.

You can tell the author researched very well prior to writing this book. Sometimes historical fiction leans into modern points of view, but this one truly felt like a lived-in time capsule. I really liked the nods to The Scarlet Letter and the Salem witch trials. The book really moved me at times (I cried at least once), and the author’s prose is lush and lyrical.

However, there were a few things that didn’t quite hit for me. I wanted to see more development between the two men whose relationship the entire book is based around. We are told that they were the loves of each others lives, but we weren’t really shown that. We mostly spend time with their wives and children, which feels a bit tangential to the story the author was trying to tell.

Additionally, the pacing felt off in the first half and the ending felt very disjointed to me. I especially wish there was something to better bridge the gap between the final chapter and the epilogue, which has a significant time jump.

This is the author’s debut historical fiction novel; he previously wrote a memoir.

I received a copy of this book to review. Thank you to Riverhead Books for the complimentary hardcover. All opinions contained herein are my own.

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