The Lookback Window

A Novel

By: Kyle Dillon Hertz

Narrated by: Graham Halstead

New York Times Editors’ Choice
Vanity Fair's 20 Favorite Books of 2023
Debutiful Best Book of the Year
Crimereads Best Debut of August
“Hertz has managed to tell a story of queer healing with all the narrative force of a thriller and the searing fury of an indictment.” —The New York Times Book Review

A fearless debut novel of resilience, transcendence, and the elusive promise of justice.

Brooklyn, 2019. Dylan has lived through the unfathomable: three years as a victim of sex trafficking as a teen. Now years later—long after a police investigation that went nowhere with the domestic life he built to survive—the Child Victims Act opens up a way forward: a one-year window to sue past abusers, but once the lookback window starts, Dylan seeks answers everywhere: in the druggy reveries of Fire Island to the love-drunk strangers of summer nights downtown and the lawyers who watch over the park, finally emerging from an erotic and violent spiral with a new clarity of purpose: a righteous determination to gaze, unflinching, upon the brutal men whose faces have haunted him for a decade, and to extract justice on his own terms.

Critic reviews

"Hertz has managed to tell a story of queer healing with all the narrative force of a thriller and the searing fury of an indictment. It’s an achievement of language, of style, in which the process of finding one’s way back to the world is considered at least in part as an act of learning to 'speak the unspeakable.' It’s a matter, Hertz seems to say, of finding the right words. . . . At his best, Hertz sheds the trappings of traditional realism, adopting instead a swerving, almost psychedelic style that mirrors the abrupt and mercurial perceptions of a turbulent mind. He follows the worthy example of writers like Jean Rhys, Gary Indiana and Denis Johnson."—The New York Times Book Review

Not bad, but know what you're getting

The overall story was better than average. Fairly well developed characters and a clear plotline. But be warned...the elements of this story are extremely disturbing and graphic. It was almost too much at times. Most bothersome is that the author seemed to relish in the most horrific depictions of child exploitation. The story could have held its own without devolving into borderline child pornography.

Being Shown What I Didn’t See

I had the privilege of meeting Kyle when we were both very young. Knowing now what was happening I can’t believe how naive I was in those few days I got to spend with him. I also had the misfortune of meeting the man he calls Vincent in his book. Looking back on that time my family drove me up to visit Kyle and Vincent on my spring break makes me realize how privileged my childhood of growing up with a family that put up so many guardrails to protect me was. It’s crazy to think I was so close to such horrific circumstances and because I wasn’t brought up around drugs or alcohol or sex I didn’t see any of the signs. This book told a story that now as an adult I can understand. Looking back at what I do remember from those days when I met them there were definitely some scenes that started to make more sense to me now then they did back when I was living them.
This book felt like a real life version of the book A Little Life. Wish I could go back and just have Kyle get in the car with me when my grandparents came and picked me up and take him back to my life that I was lucky to have back in Virginia.
How does one discover what other realities exist around them after they’ve experienced the life that Kyle had to endure? When he was talking about a normal life in this book I was sitting here thinking how abstract my normal life would appear to him. While I was sitting in my friend’s dorm room playing board games and thinking this is the norm Kyle’s normal was something completely different.

TOUGH SUBJECT POORLY COVERED

In a recent review, the "NY Times" called this book "A gripping and savagely beautiful debut novel." I had decided to read Hertz's book after reading a more recent review in the weekend edition of the paper same paper (the quote in this sentence comes from a separate review by Eric Lee published online on AUG 1). Deciding to read the book in the first place was a big deal for me; the trepidation came from having been sexual abuse victim as a child myself. In my case, the abuse lasted for two years at the hands two separate members of the Catholic clergy. With that in mind, I was neither impressed nor "gripped" by this so-called "beautiful" novel. The emotions and raw feelings Hertz enumerates in the book are real, and no doubt cathartic. As victims of rape, molestation, serial abuse, and severe sexual violence, each of us who manage to survive into adulthood carry around heaping tons of scar tissue we must learn to live with (or...not). I'm quite sure that the self-abuse that follows survivors (e.g., drug and alcohol abuse/dependence, sexual promiscuity, inability to maintain healthy relationships)(which Hertz details in massive doses throughout the book) will resonate with everyone who has either experienced sexual abuse themselves or has observed these behaviors themselves as the loved-one of an abuse victim. In that sense (alone), "The Lookback Window" is of significant value in its breathtakingly brutal honesty of what abuse of this kind does to the human species. What I found disturbing about the book is its graphicness; while told from the slant of a sexual abuse victim, it is nonetheless gay pornography. After reading it, I'm not sure I understand why the author had to provide so much detail about his adult sexual encounters, but offers comparatively little detail about the actual abuse he encountered as a child/teenager. While I applaud Mr. Hertz's willingness to take this very, very difficult subject on (especially through the lens of his own experiences), I was disappointed by the author's need to simultaneously put in so much raw sexual detail. At the. end of the day I'm not sure how it actually contributes to an otherwise important accounting of this pervasive behavior towards children in our society.

A Waste of Time

All the explicit sex became really boring. I couldn’t identify with any of the characters or their feelings. It shouldn’t have been recommended by the New York Times. I now question their judgment.