The Unnameable

by Stephens Gerard Malone

Stand in the dark, face illuminated by sparking and falling plumes of red and white, bursts of gold some kids were setting off over in the park, but seeing only Gib. Leaning back on his hands, dirty Adidas sneakers kicked into the grass. Wanting to hate him. Wanting to be him. Wanting to find words to explain how that could be.

Audie Malloy knows he's not like other boys. At fifteen, growing up on an air force base outside of Ottawa, Ontario, he'd rather spend his time reading library books and spying on his neighbours than playing hockey like his father wishes he would. He doesn't make friends easily―and something happened with the last neighbour boy, whose family up and left, but Audie isn't talking about it. Then the Weston brothers move in.

Gib Weston is everything Audie isn't. On the outside, he's a carbon copy of his older brothers: brash, macho, athletic. He glides through a world that Audie finds excruciating. A world of raunchy locker rooms and casual ribbing and easy masculinity. And yet, as he observes Gib from his bedroom, Audie uncovers a softer side. A boy who secretly devours books, who cares for his sick mother, and who has maybe noticed Audie too.

As the two boys are drawn together, the country is divided, with separatism, the flagrant nationalism of Expo '67, and the military's "Fruit Machine" creating a manic backdrop of suspicion, disruption, and intolerance. An enthralling, devastating, and uniquely Canadian coming-of-age story, The Unnameable is a heady exploration of masculinity and sexuality, shame and secrets, and an era when being openly queer meant risking everything.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Adult, LGBT, Literary Fiction, Gay, Historical

264 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2026

About the author

Endless Bay (Mercury Press) 1994
Miss Elva (Random House Canada) 2005
I Still Have a Suitcase in Berlin (Random House Canada) 2008
Big Town (Nimbus Publishing/Vagrant Press) 2011
The History of Rain (Nimbus Publishing/Vagrant Press) 2021
Jumbo (Nimbus Publishing/Vagrant Press) 2023
The Unnameable (Nimbus Publishing/Vagrant Press) April 28, 2026

Reviews

[Carm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to Nimbus Publishing and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

Ok. Got your tissues? Cool. Now put them away and grab a mop. Oh, hell… get the Shop-Vac. You know what? Just burn the house down.

The Unnameable is a coming-of-age story about a boy named Audie growing up on a military base in late 1960s Canada. It’s also a story about masculinity, secrecy, fear, and what it means to grow up feeling like you are wrong simply for existing the way you exist. Audie is beat down by his mother’s strict Catholic moral code, his father’s unbending military ideology, and just the general sucktitude of being different and wanting so badly to fit in. To be “normal.”

Enter Gib. The boy next door. Gib is everything that Audie isn’t. Popular. Athletic. Effortless. But Gib is also kind and sensitive, and despite Audie’s built-in doom-and-gloom mentality, he starts to hope he’s not alone.

Spend enough time with characters and they stop feeling like characters. That’s what happens with these boys. God, I was pulling so hard for them, hoping life would be kinder to them than it was.

Set against the backdrop of the “Fruit Machine” trials (which I’d never heard of) and 1960s Canadian nationalism, this book did a lot of educating without ever feeling like it was trying to teach me something. Does that make sense? It just shows you a life. And it asks a simple question that should have a simple answer. Why do people have to suffer simply because of who they are and who they love?

This one hurts. Because it should.

[Alyssa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review!

This was such a hard one to rate! I went between giving it 3 stars or 4 stars, which is why I settled on 3.5 stars.

Overall it was a 3 star book, since a lot of parts were really slow and it took a long time to get to the main part of the story. After Audie went to the cottage, then it really picked up for me and I was pretty hooked until the end. The ending really made up for the rest of the book.

It was a really easy book to get through, even if I was kind of bored at the first part of the novel, I was still able to get through it pretty fast. I really couldn’t put it down by the end.

This was a very character driven book. If it focused more on Gib and Audie I would have liked it more. So much of it was random bits of Audie’s family or him working or just living his life, which I didn’t care about anyone else, so for me it wasn’t as interesting to read.

I just didn’t connect to the rest of the characters, so when it wasn’t about Audie and Gib, I wasn’t caring as much. I know the build up is important to see the dynamic of Audie’s life because it was important to the story and why things end up the way they do, but a lot of it I didn’t really feel like it needed to be in there.

I loved Audie. I felt so bad for him. He deserved better than how he was treated. Even how Gib acted toward him sometimes broke my heart! I do understand why Gib did what he did, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel bad for Audie. He had such a rough life and I felt so bad that he was being bullied for stuff that he loved. I am super empathetic, so naturally I felt so deeply for Audie.

I just wanted him to be happy and I wanted him to finish out the plan they had in place!

It was such a tragic novel! You could see it would end in tragedy, but you were hoping as you read it would have a happy ending. I liked the foreshadowing throughout the book. It was a pretty direct approach, but the way the author worded it really blended well within the story. It was almost like breaking the fourth wall, but more natural.

It ended pretty abruptly, but that is how life goes sometimes.

I would still recommend reading this if it sounds interesting to you. Some people may find a lot of the content more engaging to read about than I did, so there could be more enjoyment of the novel. The story is worth the read. Just be prepared for some heartache!

[Thérèse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe closer to 3.5 stars vs 4.

I learned so much about the country I live in while reading this. I had no idea about the separatist bombings, the kidnapping, the Fruit Machine, etc. We genuinely never learned about any of this in school, and I regrettably didn't pursue Canadian history during university. Now I'm stuck playing catch-up, but this book has given me a lot of new research topics. More historical fiction set in Canada, please!!!!!!

I wad honestly more interested in the setting than the romance, though I'm almost wondering if it was meant to be this way. Audie, our main character, lives on a military base in Ottawa with a Francophone father and an Anglophone mother. There is as much time spent on this divide as there is on Audie's sexuality crisis, but I liked that. Actually, I preferred the more cultural aspects of this book, and wasn't as interested when Audie and Gib (his "love interest", so to speak) were together on page.

Gib is a hockey player, bound- or, so everyone says- for the NHL. Due to this, everyone worships him and his other hockey playing brothers like gods. Since this is Audie's story though, and he doesn't like hockey, the hockey was not as big of a focus as I'd have preferred. I'm definitely biased because I'm a hockey player/fan, but I'd have loved for this to talk a bit more about hockey culture in Ottawa (and even Québec) during this specific era.

I think Gib had the potential to be a much more interesting character than Audie— boy with an absent father and sick mother who he cares for but can still never earn the favor of, brothers who bully and beat him when he dares to act any other part than The Hockey Player, an extremely talented athlete who becomes someone else on the ice, someone he doesn't like. A boy who wants to leave everything and (almost) everyone behind. Audie, in contrast, has his sexuality and turbulent relationship with his father due to his distaste for sports and all things "manly", but I genuinely think his parents were more interesting than him. Gib's character traits are sprinkled throughout, but there is no deep dive into him as a person really. I know we are in Audie's POV, but I just think Gib was more dynamic, and honestly... the book would have benefited from being in his POV instead.
I think I read that the author wrote this as sort of semi-autobiographical, though, so I do see why Audie was the lead. The author definitely poured some of himself into that character, so I don't want to rag on him too much. I just think, narratively, Gib would have been the more interesting choice.

Another character who I found more interesting than Audie and wanted to see more of was Dwayne, Audie's bully of sorts. I felt so terrible for him throughout the story and his ending honestly put a sour taste in my mouth, which is partially why I've knocked off a star. I also was not a huge fan of some of the author's stylistic writing choices. The story is told through an older Audie's eyes, and we are reminded all too often that this is a recount. I'd have preferred less of that.

Overall, an interesting look into a part of Canadian history I previously knew nothing about. Some characters could have been dived into more, but I still found this to be a good read nonetheless.

[Chris Roy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a good story, set during a time in Canadian history that is not often written about, with lots of Franco-isms.

[André LR · Rating 3 out of 5]

Audie grows up on a military base where behaviour is watched and corrected. He wants another boy. The book tracks that desire through what can be done in private and what must be denied in public. The relationship between Audie and Gib sits at the centre: moments of closeness in hidden spaces, followed by exposure, naming, and retreat.

The book is strongest when it stays with the body. Desire appears through touch, proximity, hesitation. It is never explained, only managed. Space controls action. Quarry, bedroom, library allow contact. School, bus, street enforce distance. The writing follows this pressure. Sentences tighten in exposed settings and loosen only where the characters feel briefly secure. What is withheld carries the weight.

The pattern is clear: closeness, interruption, withdrawal. Later, it stretches. The relationship becomes sustained rather than incidental. Risk moves beyond embarrassment into threat.

Where it weakens is in the handling of Gib. He drives the central tension but never settles into a clear position. He moves between intimacy and denial without enough grounding, which reduces the force of key scenes. The external threat sharpens pressure but remains narrow. The political backdrop expands the setting but rarely enters the relationship directly.

By the end, the book holds its structure but stops short of forcing a break. The pressure is there. The release is limited. In depth review at: https://www.notesonbooks.net/the-unna...

ARC by NetGalley

[Vince Marsters · Rating 4 out of 5]

The premise of the story is a sound one: two teenagers coming of age in 1960s Canada, under the rule of homophobic military parents and siblings. Their love makes it through the trials and tribulations of youth, especially during times of trouble as the French and English-speaking areas of Canada go through internal struggles.

The story is not the easiest to read, especially at the start. Part of this is down to the writing style of Stephens Gerard Malone, who writes in an almost spoken style - a bit stop-start and blunt in tone and not as flowing as some other authors. Oddly, once around halfway through and the cottage comes into the story, the writing style takes on a more typical flow and is easier to read. It is easy to feel for Audie and Gib as they get to know each other as both friends and hidden lovers.

One thing about this story is that there is no obvious HEA ending, and it is tear-jerking at the end as you realise that life has decided Audie and Gib are not meant to be lifelong partners after all.

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you to the author and NetGalley for the advanced copy of this book.

This is a poignant coming-of-age story about two boys growing up in the late 60s and early 70s on a military base amidst rising political tensions. The story takes some time to pick up, and some readers may take issue with the pace as a results, but as someone who grew up one neighbourhood away from CFB Rockliffe, where this story takes place, I appreciated reading about places I knew from my own childhood. This book is beautifully-written, and I would highly recommend it.

Trigger warning for period typical homophobia.

[Ellen Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such an impactful and well written novel. I absolutely adored Audie’s character, as there are many relatable parts from my own childhood. The coming of age aspect is what pulled me in and I was fascinated watching the bond between Gib and Audie unfold. This is such an important book even in today’s world. Unforgettable characters and big lessons, I will always treasure this story. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[JXR · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gorgeous, intimate, lyrical, and well-written book with some awesome characters and a great writing style. 5 stars. tysm for the E-ARC.

[LaHave River · Rating 5 out of 5]

i just loved this book!