Out East

Memoir of a Montauk Summer

De: John Glynn

Narrado por: Michael Crouch

An "extraordinary" debut memoir of first love, identity, and self-discovery among a group of friends who became family in a Montauk summer house (Andrew Solomon, National Book Award winner).
They call Montauk the end of the world, a spit of land jutting into the Atlantic. The house was a ramshackle split-level set on a hill, and each summer thirty-one people would sleep between its thin walls and shag carpets. Against the moonlight the house's octagonal roof resembled a bee's nest. It was dubbed The Hive.
In 2013, John Glynn joined the share house. Packing his duffel for that first Memorial Day Weekend, he prayed for clarity. At twenty-seven, he was crippled by an all-encompassing loneliness, a feeling he had carried in his heart for as long as he could remember. John didn't understand the loneliness. He just knew it was there. Like the moon gone dark.
Out East is the portrait of a summer, of The Hive and the people who lived in it, and John's own reckoning with a half-formed sense of self. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, The Hive was a center of gravity, a port of call, a home. Friendships, conflicts, secrets and epiphanies blossomed within this tightly woven friend group and came to define how they would live out the rest of their twenties and beyond.
Blending the sand-strewn milieu of George Howe Colt's The Big House with the radiant aching of Olivia Liang's The Lonely City, Out East is a keenly wrought story of love and transformation, longing and escape in our own contemporary moment.
"An unforgettable story told with feeling and humor and above all with the razor-sharp skill of a delicate and highly gifted writer." -- André Aciman, New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name
"Out East is full of intimacy and hope and frustration and joy, an extraordinary tale of emotional awakening and lacerating ambivalence, a confession of self-doubt that becomes self-knowledge." -- Andrew Solomon, National Book Award winner
An Entertainment Weekly Best Book of May 2019A Time magazine Best Book of May 2019Cosmopolitan Best Book of May 2019An O, the Oprah Magazine Best LGBTQ Book of 2019

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Glynn is such a warm, elegant, and gorgeously precise writer...Like the best coming-of-age books, "Out East" is a tender, patient how-to manual, sketching a path to self-actualization, or at least to self-acceptance."—The New Yorker

"Glynn's memoir is perfectly evocative of long, lazy summers, taking place over a few months in Montauk and charting the blossoming of friendships, the heat of new romances, and the journeys to self-discovery."—Entertainment Weekly

"A moving account of the particular sort of loneliness that descends when you know you're unhappy but don't quite know why, and the boundless devotion of the chosen family who's there while you're figuring it out."—Oprah.com

"This book perfectly captures unrequited love and longing, as John struggles with growing feelings for his fellow vacationer... this one is staying on my shelf forever."—Cosmopolitan

"Sun-soaked and brimming with youth, Glynn's debut memoir chronicles a life-changing summer spent in a Montauk share house. With honesty, heart, and generosity, the memoir explores friendship, first love, and identity."—The Millions

"'We were sun children chasing an eternal summer.' This boisterous chronicle of a summer in Montauk sees a group of 20-something housemates who'll grow to know, to love, and care for one another. They work hard during the week, party hard on weekends, and each will face heartthrob and heartbreak. A coming out story told with feeling and humor and above all with the razor-sharp skill of a delicate and highly gifted writer."—Andre Aciman, New York Times bestselling author of Call Me by Your Name

"Out East is full of intimacy and hope and frustration and joy, an extraordinary tale of emotional awakening and lacerating ambivalence, a confession of self-doubt that becomes self-knowledge. It beautifully charts the dynamics of a group of people in a house share, but it's also about the emergence of its narrator into an exquisite emotional honesty. It's gripping and generous, and hidden in its rollicking naivete is a good measure of authentic wisdom."—Andrew Solomon, National Book Award winner

"Out East personifies summer magic. [It] refashions the epic summer tale, dosed with lyrical brawn, grace, and ingenuity. Summer or not, sharing a cool pop with John Glynn's remarkable Out East will nudge you to believe in believing once again."—Lambda Literary

"Written with the same clarity and ebullience as E.B. White's 'Once More to the Lake,' if said essay were also infused with equal parts vodka, millennial angst, and sexual longing."—Chicago Review of Books

Sweet story

This was a nice easy sweet coming-of-age story. Well told, and unfolded nicely. There was a singsong pattern to the narrator that was a little annoying at first but eventually got used to it and could hear past it.

Excellent narration of an intimate and moving story

I enjoyed listening to Out East by John Glynn. The memoir is an intimate account of one summer of decadence and self discovery. Crouch is an excellent narrator. Glynn does a good job of making you feel like you are at the Hive; he also renders his sorrow, longing, grief and love so articulately.

Quick and Easy

This is a quick and easy read. Growing up in the Hamptons and being gay maybe attracted me a little more to this book than the average person. This is a pretty topical book that shows where we are as gay people in a certain strata in NYC society. It’s a good beach read or a book for someone young coming to grips with their sexuality.

Whole book is about deciding if he’s gay or not...

Pretty disappointing... The entire book is about a summer trip that’s paid for by his deceased grandmother. He spends the entire summer deciding if he’s hay or not. Not horrible, but don’t recommend unless that’s your thing...

Right theme, wrong author

John Glynn is a poor man's F. Scott Fitzgerald in every conceivable way, and I even hesitate to put the two on the furthest possible ends of the same spectrum, because doing so still feels like a insult to Fitzgerald. Despite the adequate and descriptive writing, the sheer banality of the story arc and single dimension of virtually every character made listening an almost unbearable task. Not every story deserves to be told, read, or listened to. Glynn's arc was almost so flat that Flat Earth theorists could post Reddit threads about it.

Pregame, pregame, pregame

Picked this up when I saw it on the New Yorker’s summer 2019 list and I was disappointed.
I wish this manuscript had another go around with an aggressive editor. The author’s use of brand names, “the hive,” and “pregame” is beyond cloying and really took away from my enjoyment of a fun summer story.

Total waste

I finished because hope never dies. I kept thinking this 27 year old man would show the smallest evidence that he was self aware enough to understand his gross immaturity and lack of human development. Beyond carrying his stuffed animals to the beach at nearly 30 years of age, was he at least aware that his maturity as a person had been completely blocked by his denial of sexuality and by a set of superficial values that rendered him incapable of loving himself or others? Turns out, no. This means that the protagonist of the story — the glossy, fearful culture that made him who he is — is never once questioned or held accountable for the damage done to this man. Wake up people. Until we see how this tragedy happened we can’t redeem the hour.