What do you think?
Rate this book
An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail
A friendship is a filiation we choose. It holds love and laughter; it can extend our sense of the possible. Moved to honour a form of relation often subordinated to romantic and familial ties, and to explore a part of her own history, Hélène Giannecchini pieces together an alternative genealogy of queer ancestors. In searching and sensitive prose, she sifts the past to bring existences deemed 'marginal' into communion with each other, traces of which may remain only in memory and archival fragments. Roving from Casa Susanna, a space of freedom from persecution in McCarthyite North America, to the diary of a man living with HIV in France, and to the life and work of pioneering lesbian photographer Donna Gottschalk, each narrative counters oblivion through loving acts of witness. A slantwise gathering of queer life and activism in the twentieth century, interspersed with images encountered by chance, An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail establishes friendship as a vital political force and offers a moving testament to its liberatory power.
201 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 26, 2026
21 people are currently reading
874 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
April 5, 2026
el llibre que m'he comprat i llegit a parís 🩷 m'ha agradat moltíssim, sort sempre de les amigues i d'agafar-nos les mans a tot arreu
March 21, 2026
At the book launch for the English translation with Fitzcarraldo Editions, Hélène Giannecchini told the audience: "In France, we only got non-fiction a few years ago. Before that, we only had essays and novels." This is a work of creative non-fiction, or autotheory to be more specific, in the tradition of Maggie Nelson's Argonauts. Giannecchini considers how queer people may put friendship at the center of their existence and contemplates how queerness allows people to think more creatively about their relationships with others and to reconsider how they build their lives.
Giannecchini desires to live among her friends, to build a life of them, and goes searching for a queer past where she can locate the genealogies of these desires. Towards the beginning of the book she writes "Friendship saves us, it is a founding principle, a fortification. It does not dwindle with the years, it is an alternative to the so-called biological family, a categorically different bond; it is a political force." An Army of Lovers falls within the tradition of "chosen family" or "families by choice," a term that comes from thee anthropologist Kath Weston when when she studied gay communities in San Francisco.
For queer people, friendship has a complicated history. For decades, queer people in the archives have had their love affairs and deep intimacies reduced to just being friends or the euphemistic "roommates." So to find actual, platonic queer friendship in the archive is an entirely new task, one that takes Giannechini to archives across France and the United States. She learns about the AIDS crisis and how lesbians helped gay men through ACT UP and end of life care, as well as the history of queer architecture: remaking homes in order to live among friends and in community.
Foregrounding friends, a different type of kinship, also disrupts the biological nuclear family which is an organism that privatizes relationships and ultimately benefits capitalism. Giannecchini considers abandoning the family entirely, writing "we don't change structures, they change us." However, at other points she contemplates marrying close friends in order to gain legal protections for this special type of relationship that does not exist without a marriage contract. Giannecchini is also frustrated by the limitations that language imposes on friendship. There are so few words to describe the complications of interpersonal relationships: merely lovers or friends will not do. The most compelling argument about language that is made is when Giannecchini suggests comradeship as a term through which to build new communities: "comradeship is precious because it momentarily suspends the notion of identity as the sole defining factor of a person." Comradeship recognizes a shared struggle, it represents a relationship where two people see their liberation as deeply interconnected.
Finally, there are many moments of brilliance when Giannecchini discusses the archive and how the archive acts upon researchers. She writes "Literature must not treat the archive as a reserve of lives at its disposal, but must collaborate with it instead." Indeed, I imagine the lives I uncover in these hallowed spaces to not merely be mechanisms by which to structure an argument and complete a thesis, but co-collaborators in my research endeavor. We owe something to the people we study; they are not merely stories for us to take.
Such a wonderful book, I think everyone should read it.
Giannecchini desires to live among her friends, to build a life of them, and goes searching for a queer past where she can locate the genealogies of these desires. Towards the beginning of the book she writes "Friendship saves us, it is a founding principle, a fortification. It does not dwindle with the years, it is an alternative to the so-called biological family, a categorically different bond; it is a political force." An Army of Lovers falls within the tradition of "chosen family" or "families by choice," a term that comes from thee anthropologist Kath Weston when when she studied gay communities in San Francisco.
For queer people, friendship has a complicated history. For decades, queer people in the archives have had their love affairs and deep intimacies reduced to just being friends or the euphemistic "roommates." So to find actual, platonic queer friendship in the archive is an entirely new task, one that takes Giannechini to archives across France and the United States. She learns about the AIDS crisis and how lesbians helped gay men through ACT UP and end of life care, as well as the history of queer architecture: remaking homes in order to live among friends and in community.
Foregrounding friends, a different type of kinship, also disrupts the biological nuclear family which is an organism that privatizes relationships and ultimately benefits capitalism. Giannecchini considers abandoning the family entirely, writing "we don't change structures, they change us." However, at other points she contemplates marrying close friends in order to gain legal protections for this special type of relationship that does not exist without a marriage contract. Giannecchini is also frustrated by the limitations that language imposes on friendship. There are so few words to describe the complications of interpersonal relationships: merely lovers or friends will not do. The most compelling argument about language that is made is when Giannecchini suggests comradeship as a term through which to build new communities: "comradeship is precious because it momentarily suspends the notion of identity as the sole defining factor of a person." Comradeship recognizes a shared struggle, it represents a relationship where two people see their liberation as deeply interconnected.
Finally, there are many moments of brilliance when Giannecchini discusses the archive and how the archive acts upon researchers. She writes "Literature must not treat the archive as a reserve of lives at its disposal, but must collaborate with it instead." Indeed, I imagine the lives I uncover in these hallowed spaces to not merely be mechanisms by which to structure an argument and complete a thesis, but co-collaborators in my research endeavor. We owe something to the people we study; they are not merely stories for us to take.
Such a wonderful book, I think everyone should read it.
March 31, 2026
I will always treasure this book - an alternative telling of queer history through found artefacts, diaries, stories and interviews. Giannecchini brings queer ancestors to life so vividly, reminding us we should never forget those who came before us.
April 10, 2026
yeah this was excellent
March 27, 2026
A free ranging collection of essays, with Giannecchini thinking in various ways about ideas of queer community and friendship; at times drawing on examples from her own life, at other times on examples and precedents she has searched out in her readings and research looking for potential models. A few of these essays are a little dry and academic, but some are very moving, in particular one where Giannecchini travels over from France to America to meet Donna Gottschalk, a half forgotten photographer who's photos from her youth in the 60s and 70s have recently been rediscovered; it was at an exibiton of these photos where Giannecchini had written the exibition text that I found this book.
Review of advance copy
The book is a heartfelt anthem to friendship and the diverse reality of relationships. It explores stories of relationships we may call familial that refer not to the biological understanding of family but the concept of a chosen family. It does so from an LGBTQ perspective by mainly writing from and on lesbian and trans-gender experiences.
The writing is beautiful and let’s one immerse in the different stories of individuals that are portrayed throughout the book.
I can only recommend reading it!
The writing is beautiful and let’s one immerse in the different stories of individuals that are portrayed throughout the book.
I can only recommend reading it!
Review of advance copy
Amazing. Exactly what I needed. Have been exploring the borderlands of these concepts within my own life. So many of my friends are queer and so am I and yet, mainly due to having been sort of isolated from making children in my early twenties in a heterosexual nuclear unit, I have never been that close to any queer community. I’ve visited, experienced the togetherness too. I’ve always experienced my relational life as fluctuating, nuanced, unencumbered by the need to label or define. I love reading anything I can about this topic and this book was an excellent exploration of this.
May 5, 2026
Kinship > family
May 7, 2026
VITAL
Review of advance copy
<3 queer history <3 queer resilience <3 my queer community
May 6, 2026
super pomysł, ale można byłoby zatrzeć misyjny sznyt i wrzucić więcej praktyki
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews