Thomas Grattan

A young gay man upends the lives of a powerful art-world couple in this steamy novel of self-discovery. It’s 2001, and twenty-four-year-old Gordon—handsome, sensitive, and eager for direction—takes a bus from Minnesota to New York City because it’s the only place for a young gay man to go. As he begins to settle into the city’s punishing rhythm, he gets a job walking rich Manhattanites’ dogs. But it isn’t until he stumbles into the West Village brownstone of two of his clients, the powerful gallery owners Phillip and Nicola, that Gordon learns how much the world has hidden from him—and what he’s capable of doing in order to get it for himself. A lush, heart-quickening novel about family and art, sex and class, and the terror of self-discovery, Thomas Grattan’s In Tongues chronicles Gordon’s perilous pursuit of belonging from the Midwest to New York and, later, to Europe and Mexico City. As he floats further into Phillip and Nicola’s exclusive universe, and as lines blur between employee, muse, lover, and mentor, Gordon’s charm, manipulation, and growing ambition begin to escape his own control, in turn threatening to unravel the lives, and lies, of those around him. Anchored by winsome lyricism, glinting intellect, and a main character whose yearnings and mistakes come to feel like our own, In Tongues crackles with fierce longing and pointed emotion, further confirming Grattan as a rare chronicler of young adulthood’s joys and devastations.

A Novel

In Tongues

bellamy-hill

Nicola saw the flowers and coffee and looked at me like I was a precious mineral. I wanted to be that. Wanted, too, not to need his look to authenticate my value. 

friendship as disappointment, as tension needed to strengthen foundation

In the years since, Janice is the person I've become closest to, though we live far apart now and don't have to share the stultifying slog of the day- to-day. Still there are moments when she's failed me with a force I'm undone by, and I hate to consider the ways I've surely done the same to her. 

now why the hell did gordon clock the transmasc tea like that 😭😭😭

"Meredith died," and for a second I'd think she was talking about her former lover, forgetting she'd named her oldest child after her ex who no longer uses that name or gender and lives in Nashville now, regularly posting their poetry on Instagram.

I hardly knew him but already he'd turned into a country for me to claim.

In Tongues quotes

Join the club