My Lover, the Rabbi - Wayne Koestenbaum
A review of Wayne Koestenbaum’s novel tracing how erotic intensity hardens into systems of control and managed intimacy.
464 pages · Kindle edition · Granta Books, March 2026
Desire Under Management
My Lover, the Rabbi is a striking novel, driven less by plot than by the force of its language. Koestenbaum writes in long, pressurised sentences that think on the page, stacking desire, analysis and self-mockery without pause. The opening chapters are explicitly erotic and deliberately excessive, using sex as propulsion rather than ornament. What keeps the book gripping is the sharpness and control of the prose.
It is also, unmistakably, a gay novel. The central relationship is between men, the sex is frank, and the world it inhabits is one of gay male mentorship, patronage and erotic hierarchy. The book assumes queerness as a given, yet it offers no comfort. Intimacy is not shelter here but exposure, grading and risk.
Midway through, the book quietly but decisively changes register. The erotic voltage remains, but its function shifts. Sex turns into technique, then into control. Lovers become managers, benefactors and administrators. Institutions seep into the bedroom, and the language of care begins to sound procedural.
The sentences never slow to match that chill. The pace stays urgent even as the story moves into grief, authority and managed loss. The result is unsettling and persuasive. This is a novel that begins in obsession and ends in systems, carried all the way by the confidence and intelligence of its language.
Advance reading copy provided by NetGalley and Granta.