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The Living Realm
“At once an unflinchingly beautiful novel about queer desire, summer days, and casual sex that is also an elegy to friendship, grief, and lovers lost.” ―Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize–winning author of
John of John
"Slim but astonishing." ―Christopher Bollen, The New York Times Book Review
"Strange, sexy, and sad, The Living Realm goes to wild places while still feeling incredibly human." ―Josh Silver, author of Fruit Fly
While cruising one evening by Teufelssee, a small glacial lake in the Grunewald forest on the edge of Berlin, a man spots a handsome stranger who bears an uncanny resemblance to his former lover. Only, Lukas died nearly thirty years ago. Yet the man cannot shake the feeling that it was really Lukas he saw. As the man spends a long, hot summer by the lake, he continues to encounter Lukas, and then other lost lovers as well. As he attempts to make sense of the strange occurrences and learns more of Teufelssee, he finds himself venturing deeper into the mystery of the forest, leading him to question not just his sanity but the nature of time itself.
Written with the lyricism and erudition that have made Jordan Tannahill an internationally celebrated playwright, The Living Realm is a moving, dreamlike novel and an elegy to the ways our lives become entangled with history, the natural world, and those we love.
"Slim but astonishing." ―Christopher Bollen, The New York Times Book Review
"Strange, sexy, and sad, The Living Realm goes to wild places while still feeling incredibly human." ―Josh Silver, author of Fruit Fly
While cruising one evening by Teufelssee, a small glacial lake in the Grunewald forest on the edge of Berlin, a man spots a handsome stranger who bears an uncanny resemblance to his former lover. Only, Lukas died nearly thirty years ago. Yet the man cannot shake the feeling that it was really Lukas he saw. As the man spends a long, hot summer by the lake, he continues to encounter Lukas, and then other lost lovers as well. As he attempts to make sense of the strange occurrences and learns more of Teufelssee, he finds himself venturing deeper into the mystery of the forest, leading him to question not just his sanity but the nature of time itself.
Written with the lyricism and erudition that have made Jordan Tannahill an internationally celebrated playwright, The Living Realm is a moving, dreamlike novel and an elegy to the ways our lives become entangled with history, the natural world, and those we love.
160 pages, Hardcover
Published September 8, 2026
About the author
Jordan Tannahill
25 books192 followersJordan Tannahill is a Canadian novelist and playwright based in London.
His debut novel, Liminal, won France's 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires. His second novel, The Listeners, was a Canadian bestseller, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize.
Tannahill is the author of several plays, and the book of essays, Theatre of the Unimpressed.
In 2019, CBC Arts named Tannahill as one of sixty-nine LGBTQ Canadians, living or deceased, who has shaped the country's history.
His debut novel, Liminal, won France's 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires. His second novel, The Listeners, was a Canadian bestseller, and was shortlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize.
Tannahill is the author of several plays, and the book of essays, Theatre of the Unimpressed.
In 2019, CBC Arts named Tannahill as one of sixty-nine LGBTQ Canadians, living or deceased, who has shaped the country's history.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 143 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Although this is the author's third novel, most will know him, as I do, as a ferociously talented playwright, most recently of the controversial and award-winning Prince Faggot, which I also loved. None of his previous works quite prepared me, however, for this stunning short work that manages to cover such a multitude of life's most essential subjects - time, love, death, connection, sex, nature, morality, art, responsibility, etc., etc. - and do so with unerringly precise prose and thoughtful nuance.
It's the type of book you want to buy multiple copies of and thrust it into the hands of everyone you know and scream: JUST READ IT!! NOW!! Mine is not the only voice proclaiming this a masterpiece - it's also garnered effusive praise from the likes of Douglas Stuart, Tash Aw and Garth Greenwell, and has nearly all 5-star ratings, so far.
Oddly, this book begins very similarly to the latest Philippe Besson book I just finished, The Summer Boy, with a man encountering an old lover from 30 years before who could not possibly exist in the here and now - but then they go in completely different directions.
I also thought it had echoes of both Alain Giraudie's film Stranger by the Lake, and Andrew Haigh's All of us Strangers, while being completely unique and original. The last 10 pages, a phenomenal tour de force from the consciousness of a feral pig (!!), is some of the best writing I've encountered in a very long time.
There is no doubt in my mind that not only will this make my top 3 reads of 2026, but that I will come back and reread it (it only takes about 4 hours), once I've had more time to process and digest. AND will buy a hardcopy edition when it comes out in Sept. for my collection - I love the gorgeous cover, too! I've already ordered copies of Tannahill's other two novels.
Many thanks to Netgalley and to FS&G for the ARC in exchange for this honest and wildly enthusiastic review.
It's the type of book you want to buy multiple copies of and thrust it into the hands of everyone you know and scream: JUST READ IT!! NOW!! Mine is not the only voice proclaiming this a masterpiece - it's also garnered effusive praise from the likes of Douglas Stuart, Tash Aw and Garth Greenwell, and has nearly all 5-star ratings, so far.
Oddly, this book begins very similarly to the latest Philippe Besson book I just finished, The Summer Boy, with a man encountering an old lover from 30 years before who could not possibly exist in the here and now - but then they go in completely different directions.
I also thought it had echoes of both Alain Giraudie's film Stranger by the Lake, and Andrew Haigh's All of us Strangers, while being completely unique and original. The last 10 pages, a phenomenal tour de force from the consciousness of a feral pig (!!), is some of the best writing I've encountered in a very long time.
There is no doubt in my mind that not only will this make my top 3 reads of 2026, but that I will come back and reread it (it only takes about 4 hours), once I've had more time to process and digest. AND will buy a hardcopy edition when it comes out in Sept. for my collection - I love the gorgeous cover, too! I've already ordered copies of Tannahill's other two novels.
Many thanks to Netgalley and to FS&G for the ARC in exchange for this honest and wildly enthusiastic review.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
what if cruising really is a transcendent near-death experience, asks this novel
September 16, 2026
Vivid, clear-eyed, richly observed and carefully composed. Tannahill conjures the past, present, and that which bleeds between them. Set by a lake that is a place of communal congregation, our protagonist encounters his past in seemingly supernatural ways, with lost loved ones reappearing on those banks at random. The lake serves as a mirror, a window, an ever-evolving membrane between the past and present, a site of witnessing, of seeing and being seen. This is a short but affecting novella that leaves a lasting impression.
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Blog | Twitter | Instagram | Bluesky
September 27, 2026
Why do queer novels always leave me feeling uplifted yet so utterly heartbroken? Brilliant evocative novel!
September 30, 2026
A slim novel, but a memorable one. Jordan Tannahill's The Living Realm reminded me of several other works, not least Eric Schnall's I Make Envy On Your Disco – they share a nostalgic view of Berlin and quirky, unforgettable characters.
Another reviewer here on Goodreads drew parallels to two recent gay films: French cruising drama L'inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake) and the mesmerising All Of Us Strangers with Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal. Like the latter, Tannahill's novel leans far into magic realism, a genre I don't usually love. But here the magical is so close to the real, so necessary for carrying the story, so full of layers of meaning, that I adored every twist and turn. I can't say more without spoiling it, but I recommend this to everyone; especially those dealing with grief and those who like their gay novels sad and sexy.
Another reviewer here on Goodreads drew parallels to two recent gay films: French cruising drama L'inconnu du lac (Stranger by the Lake) and the mesmerising All Of Us Strangers with Andrew Scott and Paul Mescal. Like the latter, Tannahill's novel leans far into magic realism, a genre I don't usually love. But here the magical is so close to the real, so necessary for carrying the story, so full of layers of meaning, that I adored every twist and turn. I can't say more without spoiling it, but I recommend this to everyone; especially those dealing with grief and those who like their gay novels sad and sexy.
September 10, 2026
The Living Realm is a remarkable bit of fiction. It's not a title that I expect will pull in a broad readership, but for some readers it's going to help find a piece of the catastrophe that AIDS was in the 1980s. The publisher has every right to describe it as a "short, immersive masterpiece."
Our central character is an older (60 maybe?) gay man who lost friends and lovers to the AIDS epidemic and the inadequate medical response to it. Now, spending time in Germany with two dear friends, he finds himself encountering what appear to be former lovers—no longer living— in a forested area that was and is a gay cruising spot.
I suspect that a significant proportion of people who survived the AIDS crisis (though the number of folks surviving is decreasing these days due to the elimination of funding for USAID and PEPFAR) may not find this an inviting read. Why revisit a period of sustained loss when one already carries that time along in the present? But there are readers born after that time and readers who were lucky enough? isolated enough? to have survived that time who may find comfort in this title. The meetings with former lovers are brief, but they're (at least in my reading) comforting—a brief return—to the moments before the world fell apart.
So consider whether this is a book that will give you a sense of life beyond loss or will take you back into a nightmare period you've fought to work your way out of. That's the way to determine whether you'll experience The Living Realm as hopeful or a return to time of pain.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss+; the opinions are my own.
Our central character is an older (60 maybe?) gay man who lost friends and lovers to the AIDS epidemic and the inadequate medical response to it. Now, spending time in Germany with two dear friends, he finds himself encountering what appear to be former lovers—no longer living— in a forested area that was and is a gay cruising spot.
I suspect that a significant proportion of people who survived the AIDS crisis (though the number of folks surviving is decreasing these days due to the elimination of funding for USAID and PEPFAR) may not find this an inviting read. Why revisit a period of sustained loss when one already carries that time along in the present? But there are readers born after that time and readers who were lucky enough? isolated enough? to have survived that time who may find comfort in this title. The meetings with former lovers are brief, but they're (at least in my reading) comforting—a brief return—to the moments before the world fell apart.
So consider whether this is a book that will give you a sense of life beyond loss or will take you back into a nightmare period you've fought to work your way out of. That's the way to determine whether you'll experience The Living Realm as hopeful or a return to time of pain.
I received a free electronic review copy of this title from the publisher via Edelweiss+; the opinions are my own.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
wow so good and so moving
Read
August 5, 2026We spend a great deal of time wondering how to live queerly, and the archive is full of texts on queering both bios (social life) and zoe (biological life), if I'm to wax philosophical. Seldom do we encounter texts on how to die queerly, or texts that queer death. Tannahill has managed to write one such novel, and it is magnificent. One scene, in particular, has stayed with me: the protagonist goes into the lakeside woods and has sex with a tree, opening the gates of bodily perception to a vision of a world beyond the human imagined as an autonomous, individual subject. Queer death in Tannahill's novel is nothing but another form of relationality with the more-than-human - a radical reimagining and reconceptualization of what is currently the dominant image of thought. Marvelous novel.
Companions in thinking: Routledge International Handbook of Queer Death Studies and Vibrant Death: A Posthuman Phenomenology of Mourning.
Companions in thinking: Routledge International Handbook of Queer Death Studies and Vibrant Death: A Posthuman Phenomenology of Mourning.
June 17, 2026
The narrator of this novella is an archaeologist living in Berlin. He and his friends Gabor and Birgit spend a lot of time at Grunewald forest, relaxing, swimming, and cruising. The narrator begins seeing his dead lovers in the forest, which he finds puzzling and his friends grow increasingly concerned about.
I appreciated this meditation on life, death, caretaking, and friendship. This novella casts a spell: while reading, I was completely immersed in it, but when I put it down it felt like a dream I’d had. This is not a criticism. I found this read deeply moving, and it prompted reflection on what makes a life meaningful. Highly recommended.
Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for allowing me to read an ARC of this title.
I appreciated this meditation on life, death, caretaking, and friendship. This novella casts a spell: while reading, I was completely immersed in it, but when I put it down it felt like a dream I’d had. This is not a criticism. I found this read deeply moving, and it prompted reflection on what makes a life meaningful. Highly recommended.
Thank you to NetGalley and FSG for allowing me to read an ARC of this title.
September 17, 2026
I returned to the lake to reencounter myself, the many selves I had been on its shores over time like so many discarded snakeskins, just as I became the pentimenti of my past desires when I reentered, naked, the nearby woods, seeking to rejoin the pleasures that lingered behind every bush and fallen trunk. What if every man I had ever cruised in the forest waited just around the next bend, like a half-glimpsed phantom? Perhaps I too had never left. In a world in such violent flux, I could not think of anything that remained as unchanging as Teufelssee, I could not imagine one feature of Berlin that had changed less in a millennium than this lake, and perhaps it was this constancy that I sought more than anything, this constancy that reminded me of my own mortal pace, somewhere between that of a skylark and a linden, the constancy that gave the lake the illusion that anything lost to time, our youth, our loves, might be dived for and retrieved from its depths with great enough effort.
The third novel from a Canadian author and (it has to be said controversial) playwright, it is set (from some early detail) in 2022 and told in first person by a British expat man who has lived in Berlin since 1991, when then in his mid thirties he took a Archaeology Fellowship in the City, a move which also allowed him for the first time to live an openly gay lifestyle.
Now thirty years later and still cruising in the Grunewald Forest area around the Teufelssee lake, he encounters someone who seems the exact double of an old lover Lukas – except Lukas has been dead for thirty years (and looks like he did when they were first lovers).
And over the Summer, as the continent suffers from record breaking heat and drought, he has a number of similarly mysterious encounters – mainly with friends and lovers that we realise were victims of AIDS – much to the increasing disquiet of his close friends, while to the narrator (and to us as embedded more in his consciousness than the concern of his friends) it feels like time is somewhat blurring across the decades as he recalls (and literally encounters) the ghosts of the past.
There is much to like in this at times beautifully written and explicitly (as well as at times in its description of the cruising lifestyle explicit) elegiac novel – its language capturing so well the different speeds and ways (for example in some cases non-linear) in which we can experience its time, particularly when distorted (or perhaps that should be simply viewed) through the lens of grief and loss.
The narrator for me does have a tendency to give rather excessively precise detail (for example rather than listening to some music we get composer, movement, pianist, accompanying orchestra and conductor as well as conducing style) but this is a rare misstep in an otherwise almost dreamlike reading experience.
However a reader’s ultimate appreciation must I think rest on two closing passages of the novel: a very odd sexual experience with a tree which leads to a kind of transcendental and pantheistic experience; and a lengthy stream of consciousness section written from the viewpoint of a female wild boar - and for me both detracted from what otherwise had the potential to be an outstanding novel which nevertheless is one I expect to see on prize lists this year.
My thanks to Fourth Estate for an ARC via NetGalley
How was it, he wondered, that a night at the bars could feel like a couple of hours, and an afternoon at Teufelssee could feel like a week, what was it that made time distort variously like light through thick glass? The boulder by the cove, a glacial erratic, belonging like the lake itself to deep time, once caught in the hot throat of the Earth before purged by fire, swept over mountains by retreating ice, and deposited there on the shore to be polished smooth by ten million nights of rain. This was the time to which Lukas and I now belonged together, a queer time, a time that defied the linear plotting of history as laid out by man like heads on pikes, not time as it has been hammered out like ore into a sword, but rather time that spread like a rhizome, with no discernible edge, no beginning or end, just a continual unfolding of interconnected experience, a bowl of water spilling in all directions at once, just as it was being constantly refilled by its own spilled water. I had, for the briefest of moments in my life, felt tangibly a part of this, felt time at once pouring and filling me beyond myself.
September 26, 2026
“Her comment made me wonder, though, whether there were certain places on Earth where the membrane between the past and present, indeed even the future, had been worn thinner than elsewhere. Whether people across cultures, throughout history, had been able to perceive this thinness, both consciously and unconsciously, and if it was because of this that these sites became places of worship, or at the very least places of congregation. Places where we return over and over to be with time, to better perceive its flux, and situate ourselves within its mysteries.”
This was an absolutely gorgeous book. It was moving, powerful, at times elegiacal, and its prose was simply luminous. I’m so thankful I stumbled upon it!!
Europe was experiencing its worst drought in some time. In the midst of this oppressively hot summer, the narrator and his closest friends spend many a day at Teufelssee, a glacial lake in a forest on the edge of Berlin. The lake has always been somewhat of a tourist attraction, while the forest surrounding it has been a popular cruising spot for decades.
One night while cruising, the narrator is taken aback when he sees a man who resembles Lukas, his former lover. But it’s more than a resemblance—this man could be Lukas’ doppelgänger. Yet the strangest thing is that Lukas died more than 30 years earlier.
Even after he loses sight of the man, he is so sure that it was Lukas. But why would he show up so many years later? As he tries to make sense of this sighting and what it means, he starts encountering other former lovers whom he has lost. While his friends worry that he’s losing his mind or suffering from some type of latent survivor’s guilt, he’s determined to figure out what these appearances should symbolize to him.
I found this to be such a compelling book. This is a story about loss, memories, grief, friendship, and found family, but it’s also a fascinating exploration of the thin line that exists between our past and present. I’ll be thinking about this for a long time.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.
Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/getbookedwithlarry/.
This was an absolutely gorgeous book. It was moving, powerful, at times elegiacal, and its prose was simply luminous. I’m so thankful I stumbled upon it!!
Europe was experiencing its worst drought in some time. In the midst of this oppressively hot summer, the narrator and his closest friends spend many a day at Teufelssee, a glacial lake in a forest on the edge of Berlin. The lake has always been somewhat of a tourist attraction, while the forest surrounding it has been a popular cruising spot for decades.
One night while cruising, the narrator is taken aback when he sees a man who resembles Lukas, his former lover. But it’s more than a resemblance—this man could be Lukas’ doppelgänger. Yet the strangest thing is that Lukas died more than 30 years earlier.
Even after he loses sight of the man, he is so sure that it was Lukas. But why would he show up so many years later? As he tries to make sense of this sighting and what it means, he starts encountering other former lovers whom he has lost. While his friends worry that he’s losing his mind or suffering from some type of latent survivor’s guilt, he’s determined to figure out what these appearances should symbolize to him.
I found this to be such a compelling book. This is a story about loss, memories, grief, friendship, and found family, but it’s also a fascinating exploration of the thin line that exists between our past and present. I’ll be thinking about this for a long time.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.
Follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/getbookedwithlarry/.
Did Not Finish
September 10, 2026I couldn’t get past the first few pages. This prose was insufferably purple, and the run-on sentences were absurd. I’m so sorry.
September 12, 2026
short book but this packs a huuuuge punch. love that we got to read about a 60-something gay man coping with grief with his friends. some really incredible prose in here that had me YELLING at the audiobook.
(also had some really funky exploration of eroticism and sex, but that's par for the course isn't it?)
in a very abstract way, this reminded me a little bit of dark (netflix) and honestly even blacktail (hawkins) at the very end, and there's one passage that is kin with a quote from society of the snow (netflix) that makes me want to bite off my own leg.
definitely want to read more from tannahill in the future!!
(also had some really funky exploration of eroticism and sex, but that's par for the course isn't it?)
in a very abstract way, this reminded me a little bit of dark (netflix) and honestly even blacktail (hawkins) at the very end, and there's one passage that is kin with a quote from society of the snow (netflix) that makes me want to bite off my own leg.
definitely want to read more from tannahill in the future!!
September 21, 2026
The Living Realm absolutely floored me. I read the whole thing in one sitting and I genuinely haven’t stopped thinking about it since. The prose is so beautiful. There were so many lines I wanted to go back and read again just because of the way they were written.
It’s eerie and full of grief, but there’s also so much desire running through it. I really loved the way Tannahill writes about cruising and the eroticism of it without ever making it feel shameful. Instead, it feels like this space where queer men can be completely themselves, find each other and feel safe in a way they maybe can’t elsewhere. Teufelsee almost starts to feel like a character in itself rather than just a place, with all of that history and all of those lives attached to it.
I think that’s what got me most. The book made me think about the men who came before us, especially the people lost during the AIDS crisis and the people who lived through it, and just how much grief sits alongside love and sex and queer life. It really, really moved me.
I loved this so much. I already know it’s one I’m going to be thinking about for a long time.
It’s eerie and full of grief, but there’s also so much desire running through it. I really loved the way Tannahill writes about cruising and the eroticism of it without ever making it feel shameful. Instead, it feels like this space where queer men can be completely themselves, find each other and feel safe in a way they maybe can’t elsewhere. Teufelsee almost starts to feel like a character in itself rather than just a place, with all of that history and all of those lives attached to it.
I think that’s what got me most. The book made me think about the men who came before us, especially the people lost during the AIDS crisis and the people who lived through it, and just how much grief sits alongside love and sex and queer life. It really, really moved me.
I loved this so much. I already know it’s one I’m going to be thinking about for a long time.
October 14, 2026
Ghosts. Cruising. Berlin. This one is all about the prose.
August 26, 2026
HOLY SHIT
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Finally it's out!!!! I haven't stopped thinking about this book since I finished it... Go read it.
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ARC kindly sent by the publisher.
All opinions are my own!
This one comes out on September 8th .
The Living Realm is a short but extremely touching novel that deals with grief, death, love and desire. The story follows an archeologist who enjoys cruising in Berlin's outskirts. Inside Grunewald forest, by a small glacial lake called Teufelssee, queer people - mostly gay men - like to cruise and have casual sex. One day something strange and magical happens: our protagonist sees Lukas, one of his dead lovers, inside the forest. From that moment onwards, he becomes obsessed with trying to understand death and his connection to the souls of those who have passed. While time seems to be flowing in mysterious and inexplicable ways, this place feels eternal to him. The novel, although very short, feels unforgettable. The writing is gorgeous, at times cryptic and very lyrical. I loved the exploration of grief (it felt real and honest). Would recommend!
-------------------
ARC kindly sent by the publisher.
All opinions are my own!
This one comes out on September 8th .
The Living Realm is a short but extremely touching novel that deals with grief, death, love and desire. The story follows an archeologist who enjoys cruising in Berlin's outskirts. Inside Grunewald forest, by a small glacial lake called Teufelssee, queer people - mostly gay men - like to cruise and have casual sex. One day something strange and magical happens: our protagonist sees Lukas, one of his dead lovers, inside the forest. From that moment onwards, he becomes obsessed with trying to understand death and his connection to the souls of those who have passed. While time seems to be flowing in mysterious and inexplicable ways, this place feels eternal to him. The novel, although very short, feels unforgettable. The writing is gorgeous, at times cryptic and very lyrical. I loved the exploration of grief (it felt real and honest). Would recommend!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
The description of this reminded me of Waiting on a Friend which I really enjoyed this year. Both explore the idea of being visited by the ghosts of dead gay men, but this is much more reflective and grounded in reality.
It’s a short read about an older gay British man living in Berlin reflecting on his life as he spends the summer at Teufelssee which is both a lake and cruising ground.
It confronts how the world has changed both in terms of the boiling hot dry summer and the changing attitudes around the queer community. And it confronts what it means to come to the end of your life after so many in your community did not get to grow old with you.
The writing here is strong, the descriptions of place felt lifelike, and there are some really good moments of connection and humanity between characters. But there was something missing to tie it all together so it felt disjointed and certain elements didn’t get the exploration I was hoping for. Still a really solid book that made for a brief and enjoyable, if emotional, summer read.
It’s a short read about an older gay British man living in Berlin reflecting on his life as he spends the summer at Teufelssee which is both a lake and cruising ground.
It confronts how the world has changed both in terms of the boiling hot dry summer and the changing attitudes around the queer community. And it confronts what it means to come to the end of your life after so many in your community did not get to grow old with you.
The writing here is strong, the descriptions of place felt lifelike, and there are some really good moments of connection and humanity between characters. But there was something missing to tie it all together so it felt disjointed and certain elements didn’t get the exploration I was hoping for. Still a really solid book that made for a brief and enjoyable, if emotional, summer read.
September 28, 2026
'If I had anything resembling a faith, it was this, this face on my tight, my hands in the still warm forest sand in the lengthening shadow of evening, I believe in this'.
'As long as it seemed that I always felt I had cheated in my thirties had found me. My first thought was that there was so much reading I had yet to finish'.
'I was so tired of that kind of therapizing lens been placed over every facet of our lives and sexual identities, it felt so flattening and false and disempowering, and yet I couldn’t discount the possibility that there was some truth to it'.
'As long as it seemed that I always felt I had cheated in my thirties had found me. My first thought was that there was so much reading I had yet to finish'.
'I was so tired of that kind of therapizing lens been placed over every facet of our lives and sexual identities, it felt so flattening and false and disempowering, and yet I couldn’t discount the possibility that there was some truth to it'.
October 11, 2026
The Living Realm — Jordan Tannahill
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5
🎧 Audiobook: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½ 4.5/5
When I finished The Living Realm, I closed the book, looked at my partner, and said, “Hmmmm… that was interesting.” I liked it, but I wasn’t entirely sure how much. And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that this might be one of those novels whose meaning continues to grow long after you’ve finished reading.
Set during a sweltering summer in Berlin, the novel follows an aging gay man spending his days at Teufelssee, a lake surrounded by forest, alongside his closest friends. What initially feels like a somewhat unconventional portrait of a particular place and community gradually becomes something much more intimate: a deeply reflective exploration of memory, mortality, friendship, and what it means to confront the uncertainty of our own existence.
I actually found myself more invested in the narrative than I initially expected. As the narrator’s circumstances change, the novel becomes increasingly focused on his reflections about the life he’s lived and how he wants to spend the time he has left.
And this is where the book really began to resonate with me.
I’ve always had a certain fear of death, particularly the unknown of what comes afterward. Tannahill explores that uncertainty in a way that felt both unsettling and strangely comforting. I was especially moved by the narrator’s consideration of what makes life worth living when the prospect of extending it might come at the expense of actually enjoying it. His desire to spend his remaining time doing what he loves, surrounded by the people and places that bring him happiness, genuinely made me reflect on what I might choose in similar circumstances.
I also really enjoyed how memories of his past, particularly those involving Lukas, become intertwined with his present experiences. What initially seems almost supernatural gradually takes on a more hallucinatory and introspective quality. Rather than viewing these encounters as literal hauntings, I interpreted them as opportunities for the narrator to revisit his past, confront unresolved emotions, and explore his own mortality through the experiences of someone he once loved.
That said, not everything connected with me.
The novel spends considerable time exploring a very particular aspect of gay culture, particularly cruising and public sexuality. While I appreciate the historical and cultural significance of these experiences, it’s a lifestyle I’ve never personally identified with. At times, I felt a disconnect from this representation of queer life, which, to me, is one experience among many rather than a defining one.
There were stylistic choices that didn’t entirely work for me either. Tannahill frequently ventures into broader philosophical territory, exploring humanity’s relationship with nature, time, and the cycles of life and death. I could appreciate the connections and what he was attempting to convey, even when I didn’t feel personally connected to every aspect. One particular shift in narrative perspective toward the end struck me as interesting in concept, but ultimately something I wasn’t convinced the novel needed.
Yet despite these reservations, I found the novel’s overall message genuinely moving.
What I particularly appreciated was its exploration of the different forms love and companionship can take. Friendship, chosen family, generosity, and the importance of the people who remain beside us become just as meaningful as romantic relationships. And I loved the way the novel approaches the end of life not simply through grief and loss, but also through celebration, gratitude, and the desire to leave something meaningful behind.
Perhaps what stayed with me most was the idea that accepting mortality doesn’t necessarily mean overcoming our fear of death. Maybe it simply means accepting that some things will always remain unknown, while choosing to find meaning and happiness in the life we’re living now.
Ultimately, The Living Realm is a novel I appreciated more the longer I sat with it. I didn’t connect with every cultural element or creative decision, and those aspects kept it from being a five-star read. But its larger themes moved me, challenged me, and made me think about my own life in ways I hadn’t anticipated.
And sometimes, I think that’s exactly what makes a book worth reading.
⸻
🎧 Audiobook Review — 4.5/5
The audiobook was exceptionally well done and genuinely enhanced my experience with the novel.
With a cast spanning different nationalities, genders, and backgrounds, along with frequent German dialogue and expressions from other languages, the narration had quite a bit to navigate. But the narrator did a fantastic job giving each character a distinctive voice and personality.
One scene in particular, involving a chaotic confrontation with police, really showcased the performance. Multiple characters are shouting, emotions are escalating, and yet each voice remains remarkably distinct. It felt almost like listening to an ensemble performance rather than a single narrator.
That ability to bring so many different people to life made the story feel more immediate and immersive. It didn’t quite reach five-star territory for me, but it came incredibly close.
⸻
Jake’s Take: A thoughtful, unconventional, and ultimately moving meditation on mortality, memory, and the relationships that give our lives meaning. Not every stylistic choice worked for me, but the themes lingered long after I finished. A novel that grew on me through reflection, supported by a terrific audiobook performance.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5
🎧 Audiobook: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️½ 4.5/5
When I finished The Living Realm, I closed the book, looked at my partner, and said, “Hmmmm… that was interesting.” I liked it, but I wasn’t entirely sure how much. And the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized that this might be one of those novels whose meaning continues to grow long after you’ve finished reading.
Set during a sweltering summer in Berlin, the novel follows an aging gay man spending his days at Teufelssee, a lake surrounded by forest, alongside his closest friends. What initially feels like a somewhat unconventional portrait of a particular place and community gradually becomes something much more intimate: a deeply reflective exploration of memory, mortality, friendship, and what it means to confront the uncertainty of our own existence.
I actually found myself more invested in the narrative than I initially expected. As the narrator’s circumstances change, the novel becomes increasingly focused on his reflections about the life he’s lived and how he wants to spend the time he has left.
And this is where the book really began to resonate with me.
I’ve always had a certain fear of death, particularly the unknown of what comes afterward. Tannahill explores that uncertainty in a way that felt both unsettling and strangely comforting. I was especially moved by the narrator’s consideration of what makes life worth living when the prospect of extending it might come at the expense of actually enjoying it. His desire to spend his remaining time doing what he loves, surrounded by the people and places that bring him happiness, genuinely made me reflect on what I might choose in similar circumstances.
I also really enjoyed how memories of his past, particularly those involving Lukas, become intertwined with his present experiences. What initially seems almost supernatural gradually takes on a more hallucinatory and introspective quality. Rather than viewing these encounters as literal hauntings, I interpreted them as opportunities for the narrator to revisit his past, confront unresolved emotions, and explore his own mortality through the experiences of someone he once loved.
That said, not everything connected with me.
The novel spends considerable time exploring a very particular aspect of gay culture, particularly cruising and public sexuality. While I appreciate the historical and cultural significance of these experiences, it’s a lifestyle I’ve never personally identified with. At times, I felt a disconnect from this representation of queer life, which, to me, is one experience among many rather than a defining one.
There were stylistic choices that didn’t entirely work for me either. Tannahill frequently ventures into broader philosophical territory, exploring humanity’s relationship with nature, time, and the cycles of life and death. I could appreciate the connections and what he was attempting to convey, even when I didn’t feel personally connected to every aspect. One particular shift in narrative perspective toward the end struck me as interesting in concept, but ultimately something I wasn’t convinced the novel needed.
Yet despite these reservations, I found the novel’s overall message genuinely moving.
What I particularly appreciated was its exploration of the different forms love and companionship can take. Friendship, chosen family, generosity, and the importance of the people who remain beside us become just as meaningful as romantic relationships. And I loved the way the novel approaches the end of life not simply through grief and loss, but also through celebration, gratitude, and the desire to leave something meaningful behind.
Perhaps what stayed with me most was the idea that accepting mortality doesn’t necessarily mean overcoming our fear of death. Maybe it simply means accepting that some things will always remain unknown, while choosing to find meaning and happiness in the life we’re living now.
Ultimately, The Living Realm is a novel I appreciated more the longer I sat with it. I didn’t connect with every cultural element or creative decision, and those aspects kept it from being a five-star read. But its larger themes moved me, challenged me, and made me think about my own life in ways I hadn’t anticipated.
And sometimes, I think that’s exactly what makes a book worth reading.
⸻
🎧 Audiobook Review — 4.5/5
The audiobook was exceptionally well done and genuinely enhanced my experience with the novel.
With a cast spanning different nationalities, genders, and backgrounds, along with frequent German dialogue and expressions from other languages, the narration had quite a bit to navigate. But the narrator did a fantastic job giving each character a distinctive voice and personality.
One scene in particular, involving a chaotic confrontation with police, really showcased the performance. Multiple characters are shouting, emotions are escalating, and yet each voice remains remarkably distinct. It felt almost like listening to an ensemble performance rather than a single narrator.
That ability to bring so many different people to life made the story feel more immediate and immersive. It didn’t quite reach five-star territory for me, but it came incredibly close.
⸻
Jake’s Take: A thoughtful, unconventional, and ultimately moving meditation on mortality, memory, and the relationships that give our lives meaning. Not every stylistic choice worked for me, but the themes lingered long after I finished. A novel that grew on me through reflection, supported by a terrific audiobook performance.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
beautiful. an elegy inscribed in the soil. grief and love refracted through our reflections in the lake.
September 9, 2026
Love and death are the most basic ingredients of life, but also the most complex and hardest to pin down. They both interplay with every other part of our lives in ways that we don’t always expect, in ways that we don't always welcome. Sometimes it’s nice, but oftentimes it’s intrusive -- occasionally even destructive.
It turns out to be the latter for Jordan Tannahill’s unnamed Narrator during a visit to his regular cruising grounds, on a summer day lakeside just outside of Berlin. Life turns on its head when he thinks he sees an old flame, Lukas. Late 20s, terribly cute, impossibly blond. He's the spitting image. But it can't be.
Lukas is dead.
It’s a sudden shock to the system and then a slow realization of the consequences, as he follows Lukas deeper into the grounds, but eventually loses all trace of him. After reporting the sighting to his friends, Birgit and Gabor -- longtime confidants who both knew Lukas -- he’s disappointed at their skepticism about his growing belief that it was really Lukas. He cools it down, but more for their sake than his, as they keep returning to Teufelssee (Devil’s Lake), the lake near the cruising grounds, one of the few bodies of water in Europe left that hasn’t dried up from drought.
And then it happens again. With Thomas, whom he has a long catch up conversation with after having not spoken in a little while. But Thomas has died earlier that day.
And again. With Sebastian, who dives into the lake and never comes back up. Sebastian, who tested positive, and never came back up.
“My sympathy was immediately clouded by a selfish terror, followed by a three-week purgatory, as long as our entire romance, in which I waited for my own results, which by a miracle came back negative.”
It’s hard to put the exact scale of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s into proper context at this point without having lived through it. Being alive for it is not the same as having lived through it. I was a child for most of the early period of AIDS, and a teenager in the 90s, when it bloomed to its highest mortality rates, where it was used more as a free floating boogeyman against unprotected sex and any kind of drug use at all. It was less of an intimate trauma and more of an authority figure’s wet dream, a catchall wildcard episode of Scared Straight for their back pocket (a bit more literal than the original meant to be). A complete introvert dork still scared of his own shadow, I wasn’t in danger of coming anywhere near sex or needles of any kind during those years.
In the United States at least, it killed less widely but more discriminately than more recent epi- and pandemics, like Covid (144k over the first 7 years of AIDS, according to the FDA, versus 1.2m in the first 7 years of Covid so far, according the WHO). Most (though not all) of its victims were gay and bi men and trans. Worldwide, the result is flipped; AIDS has killed dramatically more people than Covd (between 33.8m and 61.1m according to UNAIDS versus 7.1m, according to the WHO).
But Tannahill’s book isn’t about numbers, it’s about the people the numbers represent. It’s about Thomas. And Sebastian. And Gabor. And Eren. And Birgit. And the narrator, who is advancing in age now where others haven't been as lucky, and living the delayed trauma that, for him, was intimate: flesh and blood and spit and fights, and bitchiness and warmth, and sex and love and then, of course, unavoidably, death.
And it’s about Lukas, who is one of the ones who has not advanced in age, instead staying forever young, frozen at the age when he died more than 30 years ago now.
“‘I fear for what's to come,’ Birgit said, eventually. ‘I really do. I feel we are at the end of something. Or very close to the end.’”
And it wasn't enough to simply die, your memory had to carry along with it the toe tag “died of the gay plague”, so you could never have the peace you were denied in life -- probably from an age earlier than you even knew what "gay" meant, not that they used that word -- not even in death, though the real target is your friends who survived.
This unresolved trauma lays like a noose around the narrator’s neck, always threatening to catch onto something solid and hang him as he sees more and more dead lovers -- Ingo and Andreas and Mathias -- so many that his friends finally make him see a doctor.
Tannahill is a naturally gifted writer with a sense of flow most couldn't dare dream of, let alone achieve. Every line laps like a small wave into the next, and the next, not a single word out of place. But it's really his sense of story and character that lifts this off the ground. No one feels like just a character in a book. The story is tender yet calloused, soft yet visceral. This could be someone's beat up Moleskine diary, left behind on a bench at the lake as a testament that they and everyone they knew existed.
Thank you to FSG for the gifted copy.
It turns out to be the latter for Jordan Tannahill’s unnamed Narrator during a visit to his regular cruising grounds, on a summer day lakeside just outside of Berlin. Life turns on its head when he thinks he sees an old flame, Lukas. Late 20s, terribly cute, impossibly blond. He's the spitting image. But it can't be.
Lukas is dead.
It’s a sudden shock to the system and then a slow realization of the consequences, as he follows Lukas deeper into the grounds, but eventually loses all trace of him. After reporting the sighting to his friends, Birgit and Gabor -- longtime confidants who both knew Lukas -- he’s disappointed at their skepticism about his growing belief that it was really Lukas. He cools it down, but more for their sake than his, as they keep returning to Teufelssee (Devil’s Lake), the lake near the cruising grounds, one of the few bodies of water in Europe left that hasn’t dried up from drought.
And then it happens again. With Thomas, whom he has a long catch up conversation with after having not spoken in a little while. But Thomas has died earlier that day.
And again. With Sebastian, who dives into the lake and never comes back up. Sebastian, who tested positive, and never came back up.
“My sympathy was immediately clouded by a selfish terror, followed by a three-week purgatory, as long as our entire romance, in which I waited for my own results, which by a miracle came back negative.”
It’s hard to put the exact scale of the AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s into proper context at this point without having lived through it. Being alive for it is not the same as having lived through it. I was a child for most of the early period of AIDS, and a teenager in the 90s, when it bloomed to its highest mortality rates, where it was used more as a free floating boogeyman against unprotected sex and any kind of drug use at all. It was less of an intimate trauma and more of an authority figure’s wet dream, a catchall wildcard episode of Scared Straight for their back pocket (a bit more literal than the original meant to be). A complete introvert dork still scared of his own shadow, I wasn’t in danger of coming anywhere near sex or needles of any kind during those years.
In the United States at least, it killed less widely but more discriminately than more recent epi- and pandemics, like Covid (144k over the first 7 years of AIDS, according to the FDA, versus 1.2m in the first 7 years of Covid so far, according the WHO). Most (though not all) of its victims were gay and bi men and trans. Worldwide, the result is flipped; AIDS has killed dramatically more people than Covd (between 33.8m and 61.1m according to UNAIDS versus 7.1m, according to the WHO).
But Tannahill’s book isn’t about numbers, it’s about the people the numbers represent. It’s about Thomas. And Sebastian. And Gabor. And Eren. And Birgit. And the narrator, who is advancing in age now where others haven't been as lucky, and living the delayed trauma that, for him, was intimate: flesh and blood and spit and fights, and bitchiness and warmth, and sex and love and then, of course, unavoidably, death.
And it’s about Lukas, who is one of the ones who has not advanced in age, instead staying forever young, frozen at the age when he died more than 30 years ago now.
“‘I fear for what's to come,’ Birgit said, eventually. ‘I really do. I feel we are at the end of something. Or very close to the end.’”
And it wasn't enough to simply die, your memory had to carry along with it the toe tag “died of the gay plague”, so you could never have the peace you were denied in life -- probably from an age earlier than you even knew what "gay" meant, not that they used that word -- not even in death, though the real target is your friends who survived.
This unresolved trauma lays like a noose around the narrator’s neck, always threatening to catch onto something solid and hang him as he sees more and more dead lovers -- Ingo and Andreas and Mathias -- so many that his friends finally make him see a doctor.
Tannahill is a naturally gifted writer with a sense of flow most couldn't dare dream of, let alone achieve. Every line laps like a small wave into the next, and the next, not a single word out of place. But it's really his sense of story and character that lifts this off the ground. No one feels like just a character in a book. The story is tender yet calloused, soft yet visceral. This could be someone's beat up Moleskine diary, left behind on a bench at the lake as a testament that they and everyone they knew existed.
Thank you to FSG for the gifted copy.
September 11, 2026
You know a book is superbly written when you have to create a new GoodReads shelf for it.
I am always impressed when a book just absolutely transports you to a new location and you feel it in your bones. I really cannot emphasize how well this book does that. I felt like I was in the Grunewald Forest in Berlin. I was walking in the mossy forest and putting my feet in the icy water and I felt it all so viscerally because of Jordan Tannahill's masterful writing. (I included some of my favorite parts at the end)
This novel is a quick read about the places where the veil between worlds feels thinner, where time collapses in on itself and we get a window into the worlds parallel ours. I think its message will stick with me for a long time.
The actual characters we followed and the plot itself didn't wow me, but the overarching themes and the writing were quite wonderful. 4.5 stars!!!
Here are some of my favorite passages:
- All about the lake, life renewed itself. Tongues of mist licked and flickered across its surface, which reflected the waveform of the forest. The water bugs scrawled their frantic calligraphy. A scarlet fire beetle ascended a furred blade of grass. A Eurasian siskin chirruped from the lowest bough of a pin oak, joining its voice to the chorus of goldcrests, nightingales, blackcaps, marsh tits, bramblings, fieldfares, redwings, and chaffinches.
- If I had anything resembling a faith, it was this, this face on my thigh, my hands in the still-warm forest sand in the lengthening shadow of evening, I believed in this.
- What could I care about walking through the Hanging Gardens, when I could spend one more quiet hour in Lukas’s arms?
I am always impressed when a book just absolutely transports you to a new location and you feel it in your bones. I really cannot emphasize how well this book does that. I felt like I was in the Grunewald Forest in Berlin. I was walking in the mossy forest and putting my feet in the icy water and I felt it all so viscerally because of Jordan Tannahill's masterful writing. (I included some of my favorite parts at the end)
This novel is a quick read about the places where the veil between worlds feels thinner, where time collapses in on itself and we get a window into the worlds parallel ours. I think its message will stick with me for a long time.
The actual characters we followed and the plot itself didn't wow me, but the overarching themes and the writing were quite wonderful. 4.5 stars!!!
Here are some of my favorite passages:
- All about the lake, life renewed itself. Tongues of mist licked and flickered across its surface, which reflected the waveform of the forest. The water bugs scrawled their frantic calligraphy. A scarlet fire beetle ascended a furred blade of grass. A Eurasian siskin chirruped from the lowest bough of a pin oak, joining its voice to the chorus of goldcrests, nightingales, blackcaps, marsh tits, bramblings, fieldfares, redwings, and chaffinches.
- If I had anything resembling a faith, it was this, this face on my thigh, my hands in the still-warm forest sand in the lengthening shadow of evening, I believed in this.
- What could I care about walking through the Hanging Gardens, when I could spend one more quiet hour in Lukas’s arms?
September 6, 2026
I really liked this book’s writing most of all. I found it so inspiring and somehow nostalgic, as we reflect on a gay man’s life who lives near a lake in Teufelssee and starts seeing his old lover who died over 30 years before and swims in a sea of “what ifs”.
This is most importantly a story about grief, love, friendships and queerness, and I have loved how different it felt to some of my latest reads and how the story never seemed to go where you thought it would.
Some parts felt like a fever dream at times, as it is a slow and explorative fiction that builds in slowly and confronts us with the vagueness of memories at times, which sometimes made our main character feel a little distant and unreachable.
However, this was a beautifully crafted story, and a lovely read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!
3.5 ⭐️
This is most importantly a story about grief, love, friendships and queerness, and I have loved how different it felt to some of my latest reads and how the story never seemed to go where you thought it would.
Some parts felt like a fever dream at times, as it is a slow and explorative fiction that builds in slowly and confronts us with the vagueness of memories at times, which sometimes made our main character feel a little distant and unreachable.
However, this was a beautifully crafted story, and a lovely read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Collins UK for providing me with an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review!
3.5 ⭐️
September 26, 2026
I can’t remember the last time I read a book in an afternoon. Yes it’s short. But boy, oh boy, does it move.
The writing is a little precious and pretentious at times, but the author really knows how to tell a compelling story that covers a lot of ground with beautiful language that sits somewhere between prose and poetry. The book’s focus — on boyfriends from the past who may or may not be in the gay, cruising grounds of a forest — sounds like the stuff of horror fiction. But it’s actually much smarter, more real and lived-in than the stuff of supernatural silliness. The book asks a lot of questions about mortality and loss and being gay and death and the afterlife, yet was very difficult to put down.
Very recommended.
The writing is a little precious and pretentious at times, but the author really knows how to tell a compelling story that covers a lot of ground with beautiful language that sits somewhere between prose and poetry. The book’s focus — on boyfriends from the past who may or may not be in the gay, cruising grounds of a forest — sounds like the stuff of horror fiction. But it’s actually much smarter, more real and lived-in than the stuff of supernatural silliness. The book asks a lot of questions about mortality and loss and being gay and death and the afterlife, yet was very difficult to put down.
Very recommended.
September 29, 2026
Beautiful, erotic, and mystical. A very short, and sweet novel that pulls the reader through a time-(mind-?)bending tale of past lovers, life, death, and nature itself.
Tannehill has a brilliant knack for saying just the right words in just the right order to paint a detailed picture without being overly verbose. Each sentence flowed into the next like a mosaic. The characters unfolded completely unforced and the stories (or histories!) that were embedded felt rich and immersive.
One of my favorite quotes is from Antoine de St Exupery, he says “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away” and The Living Realm has nothing left to take away.
Well done.
Tannehill has a brilliant knack for saying just the right words in just the right order to paint a detailed picture without being overly verbose. Each sentence flowed into the next like a mosaic. The characters unfolded completely unforced and the stories (or histories!) that were embedded felt rich and immersive.
One of my favorite quotes is from Antoine de St Exupery, he says “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away” and The Living Realm has nothing left to take away.
Well done.
September 20, 2026
I liked this. It took me a while to get into it. Like I had to start it over a few times because I was having trouble getting my brain to click with it. Once I got into it I was really appreciating it, although I have to say I didn't really care for the last couple of chapters. Not necessarily the content of what happened, just the quality of the writing which I felt was a bit weaker than the rest of the book. I could kind of see myself reading it again someday though. I find that I've wanted to talk about it with people but I would only want to talk about it with somebody who either had already read it or wasn't going to read it because it's one of those books where I think spoilers are kind of a concern. 3.5 maybe.
September 30, 2026
It’s not often a book hypnotizes you as much as The Living Realm does. An ambitious, albeit slender novel, Tannahill examines the ways in which we long for one another, and how longing and love are the ways in which we measure time. One of my favorite reads of the year, whose lines I know I will return often to for comfort and clarity, earning a deserved spot as an all time work of gay fiction.
June 16, 2026
“There was something beyond joy or idle leisure, something closer to worship, in that kind of bearing witness, in observing the ways time played upon nature, and the bodies of others.”
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