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    The House of Impossible Beauties: A Novel
    The House of Impossible Beauties: A Novel
    The House of Impossible Beauties: A Novel
    Audiobook15 hours

    The House of Impossible Beauties: A Novel

    Written by Joseph Cassara

    Narrated by Christian Barillas

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    A gritty and gorgeous debut that follows a cast of gay and transgender club kids navigating the Harlem ball scene of the 1980s and ’90s, inspired by the real House of Xtravaganza made famous by the seminal documentary Paris Is Burning

    It’s 1980 in New York City, and nowhere is the city’s glamour and energy better reflected than in the burgeoning Harlem ball scene, where seventeen-year-old Angel first comes into her own. Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world, new to ball culture, and has a yearning inside of her to help create family for those without. When she falls in love with Hector, a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer, the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the Harlem ball circuit. But when Hector dies of AIDS-related complications, Angel must bear the responsibility of tending to their house alone.

    As mother of the house, Angel recruits Venus, a whip-fast trans girl who dreams of finding a rich man to take care of her; Juanito, a quiet boy who loves fabrics and design; and Daniel, a butch queen who accidentally saves Venus’s life. The Xtravaganzas must learn to navigate sex work, addiction, and persistent abuse, leaning on each other as bulwarks against a world that resists them. All are ambitious, resilient, and determined to control their own fates, even as they hurtle toward devastating consequences. 

    Told in a voice that brims with wit, rage, tenderness, and fierce yearning, The House of Impossible Beauties is a tragic story of love, family, and the dynamism of the human spirit.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateFeb 6, 2018
    ISBN9780062797926
    Author

    Joseph Cassara

    Joseph Cassara was born and raised in New Jersey. He holds degrees from Columbia University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been a writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. This is his first novel.

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    Reviews for The House of Impossible Beauties

    4/5

    84 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This book was so incredibly heartbreaking and beautiful. I had no idea what I was getting myself into but I couldn't stop reading. These Queens were fierce until the end. Some fell sooner than others and I can't imagine what it would be like to have been a homosexual in the 80's-90's when AIDS was rampant and no one cared. This book gave me a glimpse. Angel was my favourite character and she was flawless right to the very end. My heart broke for Daniel, Venus, and Juanito.
    • 4/5
      An extravagant look into one particular House from the Harlem Ball Scene of the 1980's, Cassara's debut novel focuses on the royalty that is House Xtravaganza. It was certainly an interesting choice to use names of queer trans ancestors (who can be found in the film Paris is Burning). One review asks if the author is considering paying the House survivors royalties, for the use of their names. A good question, and one I would love an answer to.

      My favourite thing about Cassara is the way he writes dialogue. He writes dialogue so, so flawlessly. I can hear their voices, their tone, the back and forth of English and Spanish was just a spectacular combination.

      This feels like Ru Paul's Drag Race, except it hasn't been made consumable by white cis hetero audiences. It feels authentic and like a living, breathing thing. Cassara mentions Keith Haring, a famous LGBTQ artist and activist, and I was able to pull up a non-fiction book and find Haring's work right in front of me while I read.

      One complaint I read on a review here is that some of the characters are too similar. Maybe they are. Did I really care? Not at all. In fact some of the similarities between the characters helped me to understand that the author really was writing about queer culture.

      It took me a long time to read because of how heavy it could be sometimes, so: trigger warnings for ALL the things. Drug use, survival sex, sexual assault, prostitution, child abuse.

      I'm trying to articulate how much I love this book but I really am falling short. Cassara took away my words.


      I'm still crying from the ending.
    • 1/5
      Why did you use the lives of people you don't know much about (the author spoke in interviews about not being able to attend any NYC ballroom events or contact any of the loved ones of the people he used as the inspirations for his characters), whose history is badly mis-remembered by most of the LGBT community, and whose experiences are outside of your own? Also, the book towards the end sort of started to center two of the male characters in a way that made me feel like, "wow even in a fictional retelling that tries to bring these women more to life, they're still pushed to the side."I know I'm a super harsh critic of books, but I just felt like this had some issues with historical details (timeline of certain AIDS crisis events and pop culture references were off are two concrete ones) that made me question whether the author did the research required to write authentically about lives quite different from his own.
    • 3/5
      I wanted to love it and I did love the characters, but for a novel supposedly about participants in New York's drag ball scene, there was very little mention of or time spent at the actual balls. There were also some mis-used words that took me out of the story for a moment. (Sorry I don't have any examples. I have the choice of either trying to lose myself in the story, or reading with post-its and pen and I choose the former.) There is a lot of good here, but, to me, it felt like it needed more work.
    • 5/5
      My heart was filled and broken between the covers of this book. Every other metaphor falls short. This amount of depth and electricity comes from a debut author? Joseph Cassara, I will read everything you publish.

      I have rarely encountered the pull of a place in a novel. Setting has always been tangential, necessary for plot, but contextually unimportant. When booktalking this title, I've remarked upon being thrust into 1980s New York City, seeing the heat steam off the sidewalk in the summertime, even though it's sweater weather where I live now. I fell hard for Hector, Venus, Juanito, Dorian, Angel, Daniel... I can't say they were my friends; they probably would have next to no patience with me, as an outsider. But none of them would let me go until I had properly mourned for each of them. The world truly is richer for having them in it, and yet, the world has no idea what it has lost.