My Lover, the Rabbi

by Wayne Koestenbaum

A psychosexual relationship between a rabbi and the man devoted to him goes off the rails in this explosive novel.

The rabbi is, to the untrained eye, far from desirable. Lofty and unkempt, aging and constantly losing members of his flock, he is nonetheless the singular object of obsession for the self-abjecting narrator of My Lover, the Rabbi. From the start of their psychosexual affair, the two men torment, pleasure, and manipulate each other with ardor. When they’re apart, the narrator manically contemplates every element of the rabbi’s — his alluring adopted son, his false erudition, his patrilineage, his broken-down Pontiac, his out-of-state husband (who the narrator has also slept with), and, maybe most of all, the universe between the rabbi’s legs. Spending time together in the narrator's bed, in a tiny town near Hoboken, New Jersey, that our narrator is “devastated to admit is my personal address,” a tender, volatile intimacy brews and curdles. To sustain it, the narrator continues on an unrelenting, increasingly urgent quest to understand the mercurial, ardent rabbi's mysterious past—that is, until he begins to question reality itself. In the process, conflicting truths about the rabbi emerge, with drastic consequences for both men and those around them.

The first novel in nearly twenty years from one of our most acclaimed stylists, Wayne Koestenbaum’s My Lover, the Rabbi is a sui generis spiral of lascivious thrills and uncanny hilarity, exposing in delirious detail the dangers—and spoils—of true love.

Genres: Fiction, Gay, Queer, LGBT, Literary Fiction, Adult, Judaism

464 pages, Paperback

First published March 17, 2026

About the author

Wayne Koestenbaum has published five books of critical prose, including The Queen’s Throat: Opera, Homosexuality, and the Mystery of Desire, which was a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and three books of poetry, including Ode to Anna Moffo and Other Poems. He is a Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Reviews

[Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

my literary version of heaven. neurotic erotic bliss.

[Charlie · Rating 4 out of 5]

First i was gooped. Then i was gagged. Then i was a little bored. Then horny. A poet’s novel in a unique sense of the term. Like getting dicked down by diction or sucked off by syntax.

[endrju]

What a strange novel. I did not expect anything less from Wayne Koestenbaum. Most chapters are less than a page long, which, in principle, should give the impression of speedy movement through the book—if not choppiness, which I usually hate. But no. I felt like a fly caught in amber, stuck in a viscous text - I can't call it a narrative because there isn't much of an arc - moving as slowly as sticky honey. If I may venture into some psychoanalysis, the short chapters are akin to object a, with their descriptions of dicks, asses, and bodily effluvia, while the entire text is the desire itself - immovable and insistent in all its sublime immensity.

[jocelyn • coolgalreading · Rating 4 out of 5]

oh wow that endinggggg

[Mayra Kalaora · Rating 4 out of 5]

so weird and hilarious and awesome . learned many words

[roach · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think that this is easily the best book that I have read this year. I out loud celebrated when I got an email saying I had received an ARC, and immediately dove in.

This is a book for a very particular person, I think, but I just so happened to be that exact person. It's gritty, language that makes you squirm at the exactness, and a story that doesn't do much to settle that feeling. At times, it felt so real and exact to the emotions of obsessiveness and unwavering idolization that I questioned if this was a real story.

It has teeny tiny chapters that help with the narration style, coming across as blurbs scribbled into a notebook, trying to get feelings and actions across through the narrator's own mind.

I totally loved it and can't wait to get it when it's published.

[James Hulse · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went into this one knowing it would be a bit unusual, and it definitely is. It felt more like a long exploration of desire and obsession than a traditional story.

I really admired how bold it is. The way it mixed explicit sexuality with religious stuff was pretty provocative and at times uncomfortable, but also kind of fascinating. There’s a strong psychosexual thread running through it, especially around how desire gets tied up with authority and fantasy.

That said, I found it more impressive than enjoyable. That might sound weird? What I mean is that the language is quite dense and sometimes hard to get through, and there is not a lot of plot to hold onto. It felt to me like I was sitting inside someone’s very analytical inner monologue for a long time.

Definitely not mainstream friendly, but I can see why Koestenbaum is so highly regarded. Even when I was struggling with it, I still wanted to crack on with it and see how far it was willing to go.

Also, props to the anonymous chest on the cover.

[SJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

A masterful, challenging depiction of neurotic, erotic obsession and iconoclasm, and it comes out swinging.

It resists easy explanation - the reading experience is slow, textured, and at times infuriatingly obtuse, with Koestenbaum luxuriating in intellectual, acrobatic, and evasive prose that at points had me drifting off, only to hook me again when things suddenly get more…hands-on. Just when it feels like it’s all foreplay and no payoff, it delivers moments that are disarmingly direct and impossible to ignore.

It’s uproarious, playful, serious, perverse, and perplexing. I didn’t enjoy every page, the middle sagged like the rabbi’s gut, but I kept coming back for more, drawn in by his sinuous syntax and the way he explores human desire and unequal relationships with both complete, unflinching sincerity.

A very real story of yearning that flirts with the styles of Proust and Balzac with a knowing smirk.

[Clara Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

brilliant

[Iza Cupial · Rating 5 out of 5]

6⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

[Lancakes]

What a weird book 🌹

[Matheus Souza · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really excited for this one. The theme and plot is just too bombastic and eye-catching to miss, so I was very happy when the publisher approved my advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

"My Lover, the Rabbi" is kind of unlike any book I have ever read before, it has a rythm of its own, cooking a plot of secrets behind the chapters where we get to see the extent of the Rabbi and the main character's relationship/ obsession.

I have to admit that, although I was going for the ride that the author was creating for the book, at the middle point I was a little bored of being too blind-sided. Again, we only get glimpses of what it is proven to be a very strange age-gap relationship, their power dynamics and erotic exchanges. The narration also feels a bit clunky at times, but I figure that it is intentional to better explain the psyche of the main character.

It is a read that took me more time than usual, and, at the end, I feel like the payoff was not as good as it could have been. A lot of time was spent with this acclimation for the plot and the characters and then all of a sudden we are at the climax, with a resolution that was too quickly written for me.

Overall, this book has the ability of staying with you after the read and I guess that goes beyond certain rhythm issues and lack of development on some parts. The lack of further exploration also goes with the theme of this blind love and obsession, not only for the main character, but all the characters that are part of the Rabbi's life.

This not at all an easy read, but strangely, it is a book I would recommend--with some precautions.

[Ryan (Empire of Books) · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was just too weird even for me. The short chapters should have made me feel like I was flying through it but in reality the book dragged quite a bit for me. It was written in such a way that I just found it hard to find a rhythm. The actual subject of the book itself was (I guess) intentionally uncomfortable but the constant shock after shock reveal was just a bit much, with little pay off or explanation.

Not for me sadly.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted soooo much more out of this! Such an interesting premise, i really expected to love this, but we jump right into the story and i was disappointed it didn’t really explore how this relationship even began. It meanders with overly long and descriptive paragraphs, so much focus on describing bodies and sex instead of giving us story or emotion.

[Matt Feltman · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a book! There's a part in the middle that got a bit tiresome, but this novel about abjection and relationships feels like an elegy for Meet-Cute romances. If only ...

[Carina Stopenski · Rating 3 out of 5]

a VERY difficult read, but the excessive prose suited the narrator’s voice and demeanor well. a little confusing but entertaining.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Freaking awesome and demented and nonsensical and delirious and perfectly realized.

[Catalina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Almost 500 pages of philosophical penis musing!
My favorite! 😀

[KADEN · Rating 5 out of 5]

ravellian in prose, biblical in grit, incomparable in tenderness, giovanni's room for haggard old jews. yes yes yes yes yes

[Ryan Smillie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absurd, horny, romantic. Pretty great!

[michal k-c · Rating 4 out of 5]

A deceptively simple book, one which oscillates between straightforward romantic obsession and the utter abjectness of a kind of erotics (which is its own kind of Romantic thinking of course). We should consider ourselves lucky that Koestenbaum has returned to fiction

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

the rabbi is not my lover

[Venneh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hell of a ride of a novel. We get the story of a young gay man who falls into a situationship with a messy as hell rabbi and the cult he may or may not be leading, and the other men in his life. The rabbi becomes a point of obsession for our main character, and the viscerality that gets described in this novel is unhinged, in the best kind of way. Definitely pick it up when it comes out this spring.

[Frances Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

What a weird little book with weird little chapters and weird little ways of depicting a relationship that was also pretty weird. I went into it expecting it to be pretty weird, but I feel like it just didn't bring much else to it for me. I'm all for weird little books but I need something else to keep me there and sadly this one didn't have much else for me and some chapters had me rolling my eyes with impatience. Also this was not a sexy book about sex, if that makes sense.

[Jared · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an ambitious novel that defies categorization, occupying a space of weird queer fiction that is as provocative as it is demanding. It is... unique - part erotic obsession and linguistic play. It requires your undivided attention to read, and it is dense while also this, psychosexual exploration that toes the line between “oh, I think they are in love,” and “oh, I think they hate each other.”

When I first cracked this one open, I thought the structure — short, often one-page chapters — would allow for a breezy reading experience. I was wrong. Despite the bite-sized chapters, the book can be genuinely difficult to get through. The prose is rhapsodic and unhinged, favoring long, pressurized sentences that stack desire, analysis, and self-mockery without pause, giving the text a viscous quality. It felt like reading through olive oil - both in mouth feel and as if your lenses are smeared with it. This density, combined with a middle section that starts to drag and feel repetitive, creates a reading experience that grows heavier and more consuming over time.

If you are looking for a traditional narrative arc, look elsewhere; there is more theme than plot here. The story follows an unnamed narrator’s fixation on an aging, unkempt rabbi, a relationship defined by torment, pleasure, and manipulation. Rather than a standard romance, the book functions as an erotic excavation, carnal investigation, and erotic hermeneutics, where the narrator attempts to solve the mystery of the rabbi’s past tragedies. Plot often feels secondary to the narrator’s ambivalence in his unrelenting, increasingly urgent quest to understand his lover. I felt like he was carrying on an affair more out of morbid curiosity, an investigator enamored by its subject, than a lover in love.

Where the novel truly shines — and why I feel I could take a whole literature class dissecting it — is in its overlapping themes. It offers a rare and frank exploration of queer Jewishness, treating the Jewish body as a text to be studied, rich in history, doctrine, and physical specificity. Koestenbaum links the act of intense erotic scrutiny to the Jewish tradition of Talmudic study and the history of psychoanalysis — what might be called the gaze as study, where looking at a lover becomes a form of deep textual analysis. The intersection of gay identity and Jewish heritage is handled with visceral force, interrogating identity, religion, and authority across several dimensions.

On the body, the narrator dissects every facet of the rabbi, from his physiology to his history and patrilineage, making his physical form a subject of close reading. In a passage I feel comfortable publishing on my family-friendly Substack (ha!), he observes, “Neither the rabbi nor I believed in the efficacy of weight lifting; and what I savored in my lover’s body was a natural, unforced fruitfulness of contour. This voluptuousness and roundedness of surface, of plane and volume, in the rabbi’s body allowed me, while looking up, through his spread legs, to his chest, to simulate the point-of-view shot that had been, I conjectured, Carla’s (ed note: the rabbi’s first wife) conjugal prerogative in the past.” Much like a scholar grappling with a dense religious text, he endlessly overthinks and revises his feelings, second-guessing himself in a manner that is some of the deepest, most introspective study.

The novel also grapples with reconciling sexuality and spiritual leadership. The rabbi represents the complex reality of a queer man holding a position of religious authority — a figure whose influence stems from his self-control and his ability to withdraw attention, creating a psychosexual dynamic that fuels the narrator’s obsession. Underlying all of this is the suggestion that the rabbi’s queer present is inextricably linked to his traditional Jewish past — that his patrilineage and his tragedies are the very text the narrator is trying to read.

Ultimately, the novel is a bold, unending attempt to fully understand another human being. While its rhythm issues and fragmented structure make it a difficult ride, its thematic depth makes it a work of art. Provocative, enrapturing, and unsettling, frustrating - all at once. It might make your head hurt to read, and you might take longer than expected (I sure did!), but the only conclusion you will reach is that there is no conclusion — that the point was never resolution, only the sustained act of looking, observing, and thinking itself.

[Amelie · Rating 3 out of 5]

My Lover, the Rabbi is an unusual novel. An unnamed narrator is involved in an affair with the titular Rabbi, the nature of their relationship odd, although not a secret to the people around them. The Rabbi has a life that the narrator only occupies the sidelines of, involving a husband and an adult adopted son who is biologically his nephew. A housekeeper and associate at the synagogue named Monica is also involved in his life, while the Rabbi is more sparing with details about his former (deceased) wife and child. The novel is a psychosexual exploration of the relationship between the narrator and the Rabbi, and the fascination of the former with the latter’s ever contradicting life.

It takes an unusual form for a romantic tale, often focusing on parts of the Rabbi’s body and stretching the narrative out of them, an interesting way of making the body a textual feature. This was enjoyable and refreshing to read, as it diverges quite significantly from the prose of other novels I’ve read recently. Other readers comment on the use of obscure or difficult words by the narrator: I don’t think this was to the novel’s detriment, as playing with language should be expected of literature, but a reader should perhaps know going in that they might find the writing challenging. For me, the prose was the novel’s best aspect, a tone that seemed luscious regardless of the mundanity of the situation it was painted on.

The biggest setback for me personally was the novel’s length, which meant it took a while for me to finish, as I started to bore of it a little in the middle. A decent slice could be taken from the centre, where the narrative starts to drag and repeat itself, that would not affect the plot at all. This is a 400+ page novel, with, in my opinion, a storyline that could occupy a 200-300 zone. While I am the prose’s biggest cheerleader, it was possible for moments of poignancy to be lost among it due to the length of it. It started strong, wavered, then picked up again towards the end.

I enjoyed unpacking the mystery of the Rabbi: the book centralises him, and we hear much less about the narrator as his life seems to revolve around his lover, a narrative which I think works in this context. In spite of the Rabbi’s profession, there is actually very little said about faith; anything regarding the synagogue seems more to do with the internal politics of the place, which I didn’t mind. However, there is a brief nod to the Rabbi’s self-discovery and eventual reconciliation of his sexuality and spiritual leadership that made me a little disappointed the theme wasn’t explored more. The narrator also rarely talks about his own relationship to religion, which would’ve been interesting too.

Ultimately, I did enjoy this novel and find it to be refreshingly different, but there were points that irked me. The length aside, it had an ending that baffled me and felt quite abrupt, considering the slow pace of the rest. I additionally wanted more from it: if the narrator’s lover were not a rabbi, would much about the plot change? I wanted the uniqueness to assert itself more, as opposed to meandering away about 100 pages in. However, I am still eager to see what Koestenbaum produces next, as there is a lot of promise in this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Granta for the ARC.

[Pudsey Recommends · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I must correct the record… concrete facts sully the narrative.”

I finished reading My Lover, the Rabbi this weekend, and it’s unlike anything I’ve read before. Koestenbaum clearly sets out to push at the boundaries of genre, and for a while after I turned the final page I felt genuinely unsettled. I kept thinking: what have I just read? At times, it gave me Genet’s Querelle vibes, particularly in its excess and in the way it entangles desire with authority.

The novel’s structure is one of its most striking features. It opens with very short chapters that gradually grow longer as the narrator’s fixation on the rabbi deepens. At first, this feels controlled and even inviting, but over time it becomes heavier and more consuming. It mirrors the way desire can begin as something manageable and slowly take over everything. As I read, I had am increasing sense that something tragic was approaching.

This isn’t a love story in any reassuring or romantic sense. Instead, it explores obsession, power, and emotional imbalance. The narrator’s longing for “the rabbi, my lover” becomes a way of trying to feel real, recognised, and chosen. He isn’t unreliable because he lies, but because he overthinks everything, endlessly revising his feelings and second-guessing himself. The writing reflects this state of mind, with long, winding sentences and frequent asides. At times it’s absorbing, though it can also feel demanding as a reader.

The rabbi himself comes across less as a hypocrite than as a figure of authority who understands the power of restraint. His influence lies in his position, his self-control, and his ability to withdraw attention. Sex in this novel isn’t portrayed as tender or freeing. Instead, it feels strangely procedural, a way for the narrator to feel briefly validated or permitted to exist. Much of the power here operates quietly, without needing to justify itself.

Religion and institutions are always present in the background, even if God feels largely absent. What remains is a sense of structure, hierarchy, and control. The novel doesn’t offer easy emotional release or redemption, and its tone is often cool and restrained. Even the final tragic moments affected me more intellectually than emotionally, which seems very much by design.

Despite this, I remained curious throughout, wanting to see where Koestenbaum was taking the story. It feels like a book that sets out to unsettle its reader, sometimes very successfully, sometimes less so.

This is very much a marmite novel: readers are likely to love it or hate it. It certainly won’t be for everyone. For me, it fits into a space of ‘weird queer’ fiction: a challenging and unconventional book, a queer novel without liberation, a sexual novel without pleasure, and a confessional story that doesn’t entirely believe in confession itself.

Go on. Pick it up!

Thanks to Farrar, Straus and Giroux | FSG Originals for the ARC

#pudseyrecommends

[Nick Artrip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I requested and received an eARC of My Lover, the Rabbi by Wayne Koestenbaum via NetGalley. The rabbi, to the disinterested observer, is far from desirable. Despite being untidy, uncouth, aging, and unable to maintain his following, he is the object of the narrator's obsession. Their relationship is defined by a mixture of torment and pleasure. Whether they're hundred miles apart of sharing the same bed, rabbi occupies the narrator's mind fully. He contemplates very facet of his being, relentlessly dissecting his life, his history, his past, his possibilities, his genitalia, his pubic hair, his husband, his car, his dead son, his dead wife, his attractive adopted son. He tries to unspool the secret threads of the rabbi's past, but finds himself questioning everything he knows to be true.

What a disgusting and beautiful ride My Lover, the Rabbi turned out to be. This is by no means a traditional story. The narrative is initially made up of one-or-two page chapters that strike the reader like lightning bolts. The bones may feel familiar, but the intentional and chaotic construction of obsession in Koestenbaum’s novel is fresh, fascinating, and occasionally frustrating. It may feel difficult to pull all the threads together when initially beginning the story, but once you’ve gotten into the groove of things it becomes an altogether different experience. The later chapters really fill in the gaps, or at least some of them, but never veer too far away from the fantastical qualities of the novel’s first half.

Who is the Rabbi? So many parts of him feel like a lecherous everyman, while other details are startingly specific. Through the narrator’s relentless musings, the Rabbi came to life for me. The textures and smells of his body, his desires and his hypocrisies, his manipulations and sexual sermonizing all began to echo in my mind as grossly familiar as the oft repeated “my lover, the Rabbi.” And who is the narrator? What does his relationship with the Rabbi say about him? I still have a thousand questions swirling around in my mind after finishing My Lover, the Rabbi. It’s a strange and provocative, yet satisfying novel that interrogates questions of identity, religion, obsession, and sexual liberation.

[Tommy Perez · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was all over the place, but I am not mad about it. Narratively, the first half reads almost like the third movement of Vivaldi's Summer--randomness with a bit of plot here and there. I enjoyed that actually! If I had a critique about the writing; however, it would be that the prose is sometimes overly ambitious and pretentious for no apparent reason. I get that it could be interpreted as technique thing, demonstrating how the protagonist is confused by the overly intellectualised institutions that the Rabbi is a part of, but the plot is so disjointedly told that it already does that for us. I did not care for the book in that element as the vocabulary just consistently felt out of line with the plot itself.

The plot is great, although there are bits and pieces where I feel like it drags on. The whole narrative about Doc Zimmerman made me lose my interest because I feel like his character was lack luster and not expanded: I wanted to know more about what he meant at large to the Anti-Pontificators besides just being this mysterious dude...you had 400+ pages and a majority of them were half-page chapters, I wanted more background!

That said, it was definitely weird being manipulated and controlled by the cult (which I assume is how it feels to join Scientology), and I was still hooked by the end of reading. Speaking of cults and backgrounds, I wish we got more insight into the life history of the protagonist. He was too busy telling us about the web connected to the Rabbi (which was not that thrilling a majority of the time) that I wished he delved into the reasons why he was so infatuated and eager to join! The only thing I actually knew about him was that he worked in furniture restoration and had Z-list celebrities for parents.

SPOILER BELOW
The 47 Meters Down/The Fall movement about that dream sequence was captivating! The ending was strong. I loved how it was baiting me into thinking if the Rabbi was actually alive or not!!! But the book collectively---weak.

[André LR · Rating 4 out of 5]

Desire Under Management

eArc provided by NetGalley + Granta

My Lover, the Rabbi is a striking novel, driven less by plot than by the force of its language. Koestenbaum writes in long, pressurised sentences that think on the page, stacking desire, analysis and self-mockery without pause. The opening chapters are explicitly erotic and deliberately excessive, using sex as propulsion rather than ornament. What keeps the book gripping is the sharpness and control of the prose.

It is also, unmistakably, a gay novel. The central relationship is between men, the sex is frank, and the world it inhabits is one of gay male mentorship, patronage and erotic hierarchy. The book assumes queerness as a given, yet it offers no comfort. Intimacy is not shelter here but exposure, grading and risk.

Midway through, the book quietly but decisively changes register. The erotic voltage remains, but its function shifts. Sex turns into technique, then into control. Lovers become managers, benefactors and administrators. Institutions seep into the bedroom, and the language of care begins to sound procedural.

The sentences never slow to match that chill. The pace stays urgent even as the story moves into grief, authority and managed loss. The result is unsettling and persuasive. This is a novel that begins in obsession and ends in systems, carried all the way by the confidence and intelligence of its language.