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Bastards
Nate Lippens, author of the acclaimed novels My Dead Book, a finalist for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and Ripcord, a New Statesman Book of the Year, completes his Wisconsin trilogy with Bastards, a book of losses, memories and survival.
A full-on breakdown, wouldn’t that be fabulously dramatic? Instead, I ended up in green gripper socks, sweatpants, and a T-shirt, a look like a California cult member or a suburban schlub (same thing) on a seventy-two-hour hold—a crack-up fortnight—until I started acting like myself. Well, not myself, because how would they know who that is? A facsimile of normal. I mimed coherence, the continuity of a person moving from room to room. I performed my sadness convincingly, pimped memories of Rudy, flensed my crazy down to thimbles of death, an understandable loss.
You win. I say it all the time to people. You win. You won. You’re the winner. Congratulations. I said it when a boyfriend told me he didn’t love me. I said it on the ward. I said it when I got evicted. You win. Good for you.
Recently sprung from a stint on a psychiatric ward, the narrator of Bastards works hard to perform at being a person while questioning the concept of identity and what it means to be an aging working-class gay man when the word queer has become so elastic and gentrified it’s used to conservative ends. Struggling to survive, pay rent, and navigate a hostile world, he takes solace in art and his friends and measures what makes a life.
Borrowing from the tropes of fragmented lyric essays, New Narrative, autofiction, and transgressive literature, Lippens is a bricoleur who creates a confected new form in his short novels. Queer pessimism in the age of affirmation. A search for something honest. An old queen’s cackle.
A full-on breakdown, wouldn’t that be fabulously dramatic? Instead, I ended up in green gripper socks, sweatpants, and a T-shirt, a look like a California cult member or a suburban schlub (same thing) on a seventy-two-hour hold—a crack-up fortnight—until I started acting like myself. Well, not myself, because how would they know who that is? A facsimile of normal. I mimed coherence, the continuity of a person moving from room to room. I performed my sadness convincingly, pimped memories of Rudy, flensed my crazy down to thimbles of death, an understandable loss.
You win. I say it all the time to people. You win. You won. You’re the winner. Congratulations. I said it when a boyfriend told me he didn’t love me. I said it on the ward. I said it when I got evicted. You win. Good for you.
Recently sprung from a stint on a psychiatric ward, the narrator of Bastards works hard to perform at being a person while questioning the concept of identity and what it means to be an aging working-class gay man when the word queer has become so elastic and gentrified it’s used to conservative ends. Struggling to survive, pay rent, and navigate a hostile world, he takes solace in art and his friends and measures what makes a life.
Borrowing from the tropes of fragmented lyric essays, New Narrative, autofiction, and transgressive literature, Lippens is a bricoleur who creates a confected new form in his short novels. Queer pessimism in the age of affirmation. A search for something honest. An old queen’s cackle.
184 pages, Paperback
Published September 29, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 7, 2026
Another beauty from Nate. A lot of the book is anchored in the haunted connections that the narrator has with some of his most dear (aging/dying) friends. There are some great and darkly funny thoughts on favorite films, music, and artists, maybe moreso than the previous two books in this "Wisconsin trilogy." There is also some grappling with queer labels and what generations of gay men have had to do to survive and connect with each other in lives that feel endangered. Excellently sardonic and thoughtful work.
October 2, 2026
not to brag but this is my friend and this book is sooooo good
October 13, 2026
Insights, jokes, anecdotes, and gnomic utterances are swirled together into... something. Not every one of these fragments lands - some are simply too vague and/or abstruse - but there are enough gooduns to make for a great read. On a cautionary note: the book is LOADED with cultural references I suspect would be baffling-ly obscure to anyone who isn't a gay man over 50 with a taste for underground/outsider culture. Oh, and hooray to Nate Lippens for absolutely saturating the book with the sort of underclass rage that seldom makes an appearance in queer literature.
Review of advance copy received from Publisher
“Buying books makes work bearable. I’ll let those who’ve had enough to eat and warm winter clothes argue about the immortality of consumerism, if objects bring joy, or what helps future generations. I care not at all.”
Instead of castigating the disillusioned, Lippens shines clarity on the oft-noticed but rarely-uttered crevices of despair. Here is a writer who understands that where there is divination lies prevarication; there is no salvation without perversion. I’m consistently in awe of his work and grateful for the path that led me to such a kindred writer. Now, back to bed.
Instead of castigating the disillusioned, Lippens shines clarity on the oft-noticed but rarely-uttered crevices of despair. Here is a writer who understands that where there is divination lies prevarication; there is no salvation without perversion. I’m consistently in awe of his work and grateful for the path that led me to such a kindred writer. Now, back to bed.
October 26, 2026
Two short passages from Bastards:
*
“You win. I say it all the time to people. You win. You won. You’re the winner. Congratulations. I said it when a boyfriend told me he didn’t love me. I said it on the ward. I said it when I got evicted. You win. Good for you.”
*
“The term emotional labor didn’t exist when I was younger – or it wasn’t in wide use (certainly not in the Midwest in the ’80s and ’90s.) Labor meant either union or birth. Now everything is labor. I saw Louise Glück, revered and freshly dead, quoted as having said not to think of art as projects because it makes it sound like work. People chimed in to talk about treating art seriously as labor and being paid fairly for their labor. I agree with both loosely – and neither completely. The lesson of poetry, philosophy, politics, and religion: You’re doing it wrong.”
*
*
“You win. I say it all the time to people. You win. You won. You’re the winner. Congratulations. I said it when a boyfriend told me he didn’t love me. I said it on the ward. I said it when I got evicted. You win. Good for you.”
*
“The term emotional labor didn’t exist when I was younger – or it wasn’t in wide use (certainly not in the Midwest in the ’80s and ’90s.) Labor meant either union or birth. Now everything is labor. I saw Louise Glück, revered and freshly dead, quoted as having said not to think of art as projects because it makes it sound like work. People chimed in to talk about treating art seriously as labor and being paid fairly for their labor. I agree with both loosely – and neither completely. The lesson of poetry, philosophy, politics, and religion: You’re doing it wrong.”
*
October 10, 2026
Honestly disappointed, maybe I’m just not in the mood to be sad in this way. I just felt like it droned on. I actually didn’t finish it which I know probably means I shouldn’t review it but FUCK IT. I am sad because I love Nate Lippens, but I really didn’t love this. But I will try again in a year and see what happens, maybe it’s just about timing.
October 18, 2026
"Remember when we sent twenty texts a day to each other? I'm still lonely, but better at hiding it. I was a sad throb then. You were scary, crazed. Each of us thought the other was a project, someone to save. The smugness of the wounded."
November 9, 2026
"So often my dream has been to be someone else. I guess that would mean a different body, but I usually imagine a different mind, a temperament foreign and unrecognizable, perhaps an ease or comfort in the world I'll never know as me."
October 15, 2026
Amazing. I didn’t understand every reference but I understood enough along with his fractured inner world to enjoy.
October 26, 2026
My first Nate Lippens book and now I want more.
October 28, 2026
Is this an off-kilter memoir or pure fiction?
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews