These Violent Delights

A Novel

De: Micah Nemerever

Narrado por: Michael Crouch

An O Magazine LGBTQ Book that Is Changing the Literary Landscape in 2020

An Electric Lit Most Anticipated Debut of the Second Half of 2020

A The Millions Most Anticipated Book of the Year

A Paperback Paris Best New LGBTQ+ Books to Read This Year Selection

The Secret History meets Lie with Me in Micah Nemerever's compulsively enjoyable debut novel - a feverishly taut Hitchcockian story about two college students, each with his own troubled past, whose escalating obsession with one another leads to an act of unspeakable violence.

When Paul enters university in early 1970s Pittsburgh, it’s with the hope of moving past the recent death of his father. Sensitive, insecure, and incomprehensible to his grieving family, Paul feels isolated and alone. When he meets the worldly Julian in his freshman ethics class, Paul is immediately drawn to his classmate’s effortless charm.

Paul sees Julian as his sole intellectual equal — an ally against the conventional world he finds so suffocating. Paul will stop at nothing to prove himself worthy of their friendship, because with Julian life is more invigorating than Paul could ever have imagined. But as charismatic as he can choose to be, Julian is also volatile and capriciously cruel, and Paul becomes increasingly afraid that he can never live up to what Julian expects of him.

As their friendship spirals into all-consuming intimacy, they each learn the lengths to which the other will go in order to stay together, their obsession ultimately hurtling them toward an act of irrevocable violence.

Unfolding with a propulsive ferocity, These Violent Delights is an exquisitely plotted excavation of the depths of human desire and the darkness it can bring forth in us.

©2020 Micah Nemerever (P)2020 HarperCollins Publishers

LOVED this book

My only disappointment related to this book is that it's a first book so I can't yet read another by this amazing author. Cleverly written and suspenseful from the first chapter. Written by an obviously bright young person, I was interested enough to do a bit of research on the author where I learned Nemerever's MA thesis in art history was Gender Anxiety in the Art of the Weimar Republic. Though perhaps a bit esoteric it speaks of a detail oriented mind that thinks outside the box. The book's story echoes the relationship of murderers Leopold and Loeb and explores the inner workings of how a relationship can take such a dark turn. At the same time it captures perfectly what it is like to be in love. A line from the book describing the two main characters is one of my favorites. "All they were, all they ever had been was a pair of sunflowers who each believed the other was the sun". I love finding a book that has me reaching for a pen to write down passages I like. This one left me with quite a stack of index cards. If one's mind is too closed to enjoy a story about two young men in love chances are they wouldn't enjoy the beautiful prose either which reminds me of another favorite line. "He hated her hopelessly for refusing to deserve this".

Haunting

Haunting. Chilling. A hard, but well worth it read. I found myself having to stop every so often to take a break. This was very heavy material that made my heart ache. It was difficult to get through in the sense that this is such an emotional rollercoaster and you need time to meditate and absorb what you are experiencing. This book will stay with you long after you have finished it.

Disturbing and Brilliant

I had no idea what I was getting when I purchased this one and I can't recommend it enough. I'm not sure if I've ever left a review on Audible - if I have, there haven't been many. The performance was a critical piece of my enjoyment and I think it lent so much to this story. I enjoyed the the story so much that I'm going to purchase a hard copy of the book for my library but when I recommend it to people I am going to recommend they start with the audio because it was just stunning.

I thought the world and characters Micah Nemerever created were amazing and I really hope we get more from this author.

A strange and utterly compelling story

Feeling the emotions of these characters is unavoidable. The story relentlessly makes you complicit. A superb thriller.

a lovely story

I absolutely loved this book , from start to finish . Its beautifully written and great narrative .Highly recommend it to everyone .

Eh

I could take it or leave it. The overall voice performance was great but I found myself wanting more with the book itself. The story was compelling enough for me to finish but it was rather bland in many parts. It didn't help that almost none of the characters are all that likeable, especially our main character Paul. I will say I found myself starting to see a softer and better side of Julien as the story progressed but that wasn't till towards the latter half of the book. If you're a fan of an incredibly slow burn check this out, otherwise you should probably just find another book.

All things must end

I loved this story it was all angst and pretentious in the best way possible. From the moment in the woods I could see that they were doomed and that it was only a matter of time and and by the end I found myself only begging for the satisfaction that neither of them would get and neither would I .

Beautiful!

This book was so incredibly beautiful, but in its own tragic way. I loved it.

i love this story

i’m getting the title tattooed on my body lmfao. i was enraptured with it to the point where i was afraid to finish it because it would mean the end

beautiful narrator+story. explained in the review bellow.

the story is beautiful and obsessive and just what i needed now. but mostly i wanna credit the narrator's ability to brilliantly embody the different characters purely by a subtle change of tone, plus managing to portray all the different states of the characters, from arrogance, to anxiety, and even the accurate tremble he voices when needed.big bonus is narrator has one of most pleasant voices ive enjoyed hearing a book audibly. and really delievered all the author wanted us to feel about the characters state was very beautifully done by the narrator.