My Lover, the Rabbi

by Wayne Koestenbaum

To the untrained eye, the rabbi is far from desirable. He is lofty and unkempt, he is ageing and his congregation is ever diminishing. But to one man, he is the object of obsession.

Our narrator adores the rabbi and worships the universe between his legs. But so too does he bristle at being relegated to the peripheries of the rabbi's life. When they're apart, he manically contemplates every element of the rabbi's his absent husband; his first (and only) wife and child, both now deceased; his unstable, yet alluring, adopted son. Until, in a bid to help sustain their relationship, our narrator embarks on an increasingly urgent quest to better understand his mercurial lover - one which threatens to upturn the lives of both men.

Lavish and lascivious, My Lover, the Rabbi is an exuberant exploration of devotion and desire, as well as a careening Catherine wheel of a novel about queer family-making, one which is attuned to the mysterious constellations and patterns that shape our lives.

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

464 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication 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.

[C · 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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Chris]

My Lover, the Rabbi has an intriguing premise, but I found that the structure wasn’t quite to my personal taste. The very short, one-page chapters made the reading experience feel fragmented, and I struggled to find a consistent rhythm as a result. I also found the language more complex than I tend to enjoy, which made it harder for me to fully settle into the narrative.

I additionally experienced some issues with the e-pub formatting on Kindle, where the text appeared as one long document and chapter titles and footers were mixed into the main body of the prose. This affected the overall reading experience. Readers who enjoy experimental structure and denser literary language may connect with this more than I did.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an ARC in exchange for review.

[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.

[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.

[Phoenix · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are two different ways to tell a story: stick to the facts and keep things as physically accurate as possible, or tell a less factual story that's more true to the emotions the characters were experiencing. This falls heavily in the second category.

Our two main characters, the Rabbi and our narrator, are never directly named; a bold choice which works fabulously in the story. It's written in first person which was a very good choice as well because of how it draws the reader into the story before absolutely waterboarding them with prose. Being so close to the story makes it even harder to tell how much of the story is actually happening and how much is skewed by the narrator's emotions.

I found this book hilarious and surprising all the way through, though it did lose me in the second half (though I think this has more to do with my trouble reading books online than it does the quality of the book itself). Once published, I'll definitelly be getting myself a copy so I can give it a proper read through.

Favorite sections: 11, 16, 28, 37, 44, 49, 63, 66, 85, 88