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Stray City
A warm, funny, and whip-smart debut novel about rebellious youth, inconceivable motherhood, and the complications of belonging—to a city, a culture, and a family—when none of them can quite contain who you really are.
All of us were refugees of the nuclear family . . .
Twenty-three-year-old artist Andrea Morales escaped her Midwestern Catholic childhood—and the closet—to create a home and life for herself within the thriving but insular lesbian underground of Portland, Oregon. But one drunken night, reeling from a bad breakup and a friend’s betrayal, she recklessly crosses enemy lines and hooks up with a man. To her utter shock, Andrea soon discovers she’s pregnant—and despite the concerns of her astonished circle of gay friends, she decides to have the baby.
A decade later, when her precocious daughter Lucia starts asking questions about the father she’s never known, Andrea is forced to reconcile the past she hoped to leave behind with the life she’s worked so hard to build.
A thoroughly modern and original anti-romantic comedy, Stray City is an unabashedly entertaining literary debut about the families we’re born into and the families we choose, about finding yourself by breaking the rules, and making bad decisions for all the right reasons.
All of us were refugees of the nuclear family . . .
Twenty-three-year-old artist Andrea Morales escaped her Midwestern Catholic childhood—and the closet—to create a home and life for herself within the thriving but insular lesbian underground of Portland, Oregon. But one drunken night, reeling from a bad breakup and a friend’s betrayal, she recklessly crosses enemy lines and hooks up with a man. To her utter shock, Andrea soon discovers she’s pregnant—and despite the concerns of her astonished circle of gay friends, she decides to have the baby.
A decade later, when her precocious daughter Lucia starts asking questions about the father she’s never known, Andrea is forced to reconcile the past she hoped to leave behind with the life she’s worked so hard to build.
A thoroughly modern and original anti-romantic comedy, Stray City is an unabashedly entertaining literary debut about the families we’re born into and the families we choose, about finding yourself by breaking the rules, and making bad decisions for all the right reasons.
432 pages, Hardcover
First published March 20, 2018
204 people are currently reading
11385 people want to read
About the author
Chelsey Johnson
13 books185 followersChelsey Johnson is the author of the Stray City (Custom House/HarperCollins, 2018) and her stories and essays have appeared in Ploughshares, One Story, Ninth Letter, The Rumpus, and NPR's Selected Shorts, among others. She received an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford. Stray City is her first novel.
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October 9, 2025
I was like a bird who stashed every feather it molted. I’d nested in old selves for too long, afraid I’d need them again.Andrea Morales came to Portland, Oregon, to attend Reed College. Unlike the environment in her Nebraska home town, Portland offered a world in which it was entirely ok to be gay and out. In fact, she soon found herself part of a thriving lesbian sub-culture. But when Mom and Dad, heavily Catholic, learned that she had a girlfriend, parental funding for Reed was axed, and Andrea was urged to return home and pray away the gay. Didn’t happen. Check, please.
Chelsey Johnson - image taken from her site
Maybe everything’s not exactly coming up roses for Andrea in Portland, but, now twenty four, she has made a life for herself there. Yeah, she just broke up with her girlfriend. Why does it always have to go like this, that the one who cheated or lied ends up fine, even a girl magnet, and the other, the one who did nothing wrong, is scrap? Yeah, she has work, at three part time jobs. But, she is a member in good-standing of the local Lesbian Mafia, having managed to replace the family (well, some of them) who rejected her, seeing her as a sinful aberration, with a community that embraces and celebrates her for who she truly is. Up to a point, anyway.
For the first time I understood why queer people changed their names. It was about more than trying to be different or weird, though maybe it was a little bit that, to go by Tiger or Ace or Ponyboy or Dirtbag or whatever, my future girlfriend Flynn adding the F to her name. The name they gave you belongs to someone else, their invention of you; if you turn out not to be that person, you have to name yourself. But I stayed Andrea—I couldn’t let go entirely of the person I’d always been. The tyranny of family love is that you can’t help but love people who think God can’t stand the sight of you.One of the people with whom she is most comfortable is Ryan, the drummer for a local band, Cold Shoulder. They hang out, play Scrabble. He sends her charming retro postcards from wherever, when he is on tour with the band. They can talk about a wide range of subjects. There is real affection between them. There has even been a…gasp…kiss. He is clearly interested in continuing down that path, while she is reluctant. But she misses him when he is away. He is charming and interested and the no-strings element is appealing, as she is not interested in having a real relationship with a man. Friendship leads to something more, making for confusion and social awkwardness. She feels it necessary to keep their relationship from her gay friends. But, as will happen, even with protection, Andrea becomes pregnant, and her secret is out. Oopsy.
What to do? Keep it or head to Planned Parenthood for a D&C? How will her family, natural and constructed, react to the news? How will the prospective father cope? Andrea has to deal not only with the biological and financial details of her pregnancy, but must contend with hostile forces in her new community, women who see any congress with a man as a betrayal.
Stray City is a coming of age novel. While Andrea learned who she was, sexually, as a kid, in flashback, and arrived in Portland clear on her orientation, we see her grow from a young person into an adult, from a newbie into a vet. The form begins with a significant personal loss,
(yep) requires a quest for answers, (uh huh) gaining experience in the world, (for sure) presentation and resolution of a conflict between the main character and the world, or in this case two worlds, (ya think?) her parental and chosen environments, growing in world and self-knowledge, (she does) overcoming challenges, (most def) and resolving into acceptance into that world (whichever world), or managing at least a modus vivendi. (Whew!) Helping others along in their struggles can also be a part, and Andrea does that as well
One thing that I loved about this book was the combination of warmth and effervescence it exudes. Andrea is a lovable everywoman, relatable even to a straight male codger like me. While she is no blushing rose, she has an innocence about her that is very appealing. Trying to find love, trying to fit in, have friends, and be a part of a community.
Another is the portrait that is painted of the lesbian scene in Portland at the time of the novel, 1999. Again (see straight male codger ref above), this is an environment with which I am totally unfamiliar. It is always fun to learn about new things, and Stray City offers a vivid image of a culture in a time and place. It not only takes on the sort of know-nothing homophobia one might expect in less sophisticated places and cultures, but makes it a point to note that even among the out community there are plenty who would don the robes of Torquemada to enforce their own exclusive set of rules.
It seemed in our urgency to redefine ourselves against the norm, we’d formed a church of our own, as doctrinaire as any, and we too abhorred a heretic.Johnson includes in her book chapters of occasional lists. For example Rules of the Lesbian Mafia, The Lesbian Mafia Official Shitlist, Immigration Question Test, and others. I thought these a mixed lot, sometimes fun, but inconsistent. Not that it needed breaking up, but a series of back and forths between two characters in brief paper notes, messages on answering machines, postcards, e-mails and unsent letters, does alter the rhythm of the story, in an ok way, while providing important elements of character development.
The author has incorporated elements of her personal life into Stray City. A remote residence for one character surely reflects a bit of Park Rapids, Minnesota, where she was raised. Time some young characters spend in Rock Camp is certainly based on Johnson’s time as a volunteer at the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls, as is her familiarity with rock hardware. (Would you know the difference between a Telecaster and say, a Strat, or a Les Paul?) And including two ten-year-olds who compose and perform must have come from there as well. Andrea’s fondness for karaoke is well-informed by Johnson’s affection for the form. I expect that Edith Head, another stray, of the feline variety, is a make-a-wish version of Johnson’s late kitty, Seven.
There is a persistent feeling of hopefulness, of good cheer that permeates the book. Chelsey Johnson clearly loves her characters, demonstrated maybe most clearly when she is noting their inner doubts and conflicts. This is not a laugh-out-loud book, but there is humor aplenty that will make you smile. We hang with Andrea as she adapts to her new life in Portland, struggle with her through her to-keep-or-not-to-keep decision, and root for her in another new life when she becomes a mother. This book is a joyous celebration of life lived to its fullest, with its doubts, pitfalls, discoveries, setbacks, joys, and challenges. It will leave you more knowledgeable about a culture that, odds are, is unfamiliar. It will give you a beautifully drawn character that you can easily care about, facing problems that are real to most of us, in one form or another, and, finally, it will leave you smiling. Stray City is a fabulous first from a talented young writer. It looks like Chelsey Johnson has found a home as a novelist.
Review first posted – November 3, 2017
Publication date – March 20, 2018
=============================EXTRA STUFF
Links to the author’s personal, Twitter and FB pages
June 24, 2022
HAPPY PRIDE MONTH!!!
The naked man body still made me bashful. You get used to seeing naked women all your life, but a man’s floppy cluster looks so exposed and hapless.
this is a sweet, breezy reversal of the “gay for you” trope, in which andrea morales, an established lesbian who has sacrificed her college education and severed all contact with her homophobic parents in order to live freely and openly, hooks up with a dude, gets pregnant, and decides, like madonna, she’s keeping her baby (but not the dude), no matter what papa (in this case, the lesbian mafia) thinks of her life choices.
it’s set in portland in the 90’s, and even though andrea is twenty-four at the start, this is still a coming-of-age novel, because that whole DIY punk zine noise bike-riding vegetarian anti-establishment art collective scene is one that supports the extension of adolescence, and andrea’s experience with ryan is really just one of those “testing the sexual waters” experiments when anything is possible and nothing has consequences. except, of course, this time.
it’s a sweet book, yes, but it’s also smart, and it doesn’t fall into easy oppositions or hesitate to point out the hypocrisy of a community priding itself on inclusion and permissiveness while despising Chasing Amy and ani difranco and anne heche and others who have crossed over into unsuitable bedfellow territory, when andrea’s chosen family is just as bewildered and scornful of her and ryan as her biological family was of her and women and her hard-won independence and sense of self is uprooted all over again.
I realized I had traded one small town for another.
I thought about some of the most dogmatic anarchist punks I’d known, whose parents turned out to be bankers and oilmen. I thought of the class-discussion radicalism police who leaped to call out everyone else on their shit, desperate to cover their own. How even I had thrown myself deeper into the Lesbian Mafia as soon as I started sleeping with Ryan. It seemed in our urgency to redefine ourselves against the norm, we’d formed a church of our own, as doctrinaire as any, and we too abhorred a heretic.
the protectiveness makes sense - this begins in 1998, with the brandon teena tragedy in the community’s rearview (and in andrea’s home state of nebraska), and the murder of matthew shepard also occurs during the course of this story, so there’s a lot of high-profile hate to process, and many of the characters found acceptance in this new queer "family" after being rejected by their parents, and by extension, the straight community, and any seeming “relapse” by a member is unsettling and dangerous. inclusiveness has its boundaries, and straight dudes, no matter how feminist and undouchey, are well beyond its borders.
We all had a strong sense that lesbian drama was our drama, and maintained a protective shield from curious outsiders. For men, lesbian was a porn category.
i have no personal connection to portland in the 90’s, but i trust the book’s blurbs that it captures the time and place exceptionally well. it definitely does resonate with that time in life, all rootlessness and possibility and revelations and figuring out the details and desires of the self and of relationships while everything is soft and blurry with evolving and becoming:
Maybe Flynn at thirty was still becoming, I realized. Maybe the Flynn I loved was on the way out. Or maybe the Flynn I loved hadn’t been around for some time now. It was easy to mistake proximity for closeness.
really, a very strong and surprising debut and i look forward to whatever she does next.
*******************************************
NOW AVAILABLE!
i just finished this and was hoping to have a review posted before its release date, but maybe you can beat me to it! go - show me how it's done! review like the wind!
come to my blog!
The naked man body still made me bashful. You get used to seeing naked women all your life, but a man’s floppy cluster looks so exposed and hapless.
this is a sweet, breezy reversal of the “gay for you” trope, in which andrea morales, an established lesbian who has sacrificed her college education and severed all contact with her homophobic parents in order to live freely and openly, hooks up with a dude, gets pregnant, and decides, like madonna, she’s keeping her baby (but not the dude), no matter what papa (in this case, the lesbian mafia) thinks of her life choices.
it’s set in portland in the 90’s, and even though andrea is twenty-four at the start, this is still a coming-of-age novel, because that whole DIY punk zine noise bike-riding vegetarian anti-establishment art collective scene is one that supports the extension of adolescence, and andrea’s experience with ryan is really just one of those “testing the sexual waters” experiments when anything is possible and nothing has consequences. except, of course, this time.
it’s a sweet book, yes, but it’s also smart, and it doesn’t fall into easy oppositions or hesitate to point out the hypocrisy of a community priding itself on inclusion and permissiveness while despising Chasing Amy and ani difranco and anne heche and others who have crossed over into unsuitable bedfellow territory, when andrea’s chosen family is just as bewildered and scornful of her and ryan as her biological family was of her and women and her hard-won independence and sense of self is uprooted all over again.
I realized I had traded one small town for another.
I thought about some of the most dogmatic anarchist punks I’d known, whose parents turned out to be bankers and oilmen. I thought of the class-discussion radicalism police who leaped to call out everyone else on their shit, desperate to cover their own. How even I had thrown myself deeper into the Lesbian Mafia as soon as I started sleeping with Ryan. It seemed in our urgency to redefine ourselves against the norm, we’d formed a church of our own, as doctrinaire as any, and we too abhorred a heretic.
the protectiveness makes sense - this begins in 1998, with the brandon teena tragedy in the community’s rearview (and in andrea’s home state of nebraska), and the murder of matthew shepard also occurs during the course of this story, so there’s a lot of high-profile hate to process, and many of the characters found acceptance in this new queer "family" after being rejected by their parents, and by extension, the straight community, and any seeming “relapse” by a member is unsettling and dangerous. inclusiveness has its boundaries, and straight dudes, no matter how feminist and undouchey, are well beyond its borders.
We all had a strong sense that lesbian drama was our drama, and maintained a protective shield from curious outsiders. For men, lesbian was a porn category.
i have no personal connection to portland in the 90’s, but i trust the book’s blurbs that it captures the time and place exceptionally well. it definitely does resonate with that time in life, all rootlessness and possibility and revelations and figuring out the details and desires of the self and of relationships while everything is soft and blurry with evolving and becoming:
Maybe Flynn at thirty was still becoming, I realized. Maybe the Flynn I loved was on the way out. Or maybe the Flynn I loved hadn’t been around for some time now. It was easy to mistake proximity for closeness.
really, a very strong and surprising debut and i look forward to whatever she does next.
*******************************************
NOW AVAILABLE!
i just finished this and was hoping to have a review posted before its release date, but maybe you can beat me to it! go - show me how it's done! review like the wind!
come to my blog!
July 9, 2018
Update... $1.99 Kindle download today. It’s fresh - - vibrant - - funny - - insightful - - darn good!!!
Creative - takes place in Portland!
“MY PEOPLE”
“ Portland in the Nineties was a lot like me: Broke, struggling with employment, mostly white, mostly hopeful even though there was no real change in sight. For all the drive-through espresso stands and downtown restoration, the new paint on aged bungalows and vintage glasses on young women, it was still an old industrial river town in a remote corner of the country. Hard to get to. Hard to leave”.
Andrea Morales, age 17, was from rural western Nebraska......
“where adulthood came hard and fast and narrow, and queers kept quiet or met violence”.
Andrea’s father was Mexican-American - born Catholic but casually faithful. Her mother, Caucasian-American was born a Lutheran who converted to Catholicism after marriage and attended mass every day.
Andrea’s plan was to go off to college - at Reed - in Portland.... get her college undergrad degree, find respectable work, and go on with her underground quiet life. She would come home for family gatherings at Christmas time. She would wear a sweet yellow skirt or sweater her mother gave her ‘which was so her’ - keep family peace - attend church - stay in the closet - then return to Portland to continue participating in LGBT student groups.
Andrea’s plan worked well enough during her Freshman Year of college. At school she was another young person seeking to find all the things you’d expect to find—
music, work, drugs, adulthood, refuge from adulthood, but mostly, seeking each other.
“Here I was no longer The Only but one of an ever-gathering crowd- Young forever, queer forever, friends forever, or so we all thought then. My people”.
Andrea’s plan broke down during her sophomore year of college. During Christmas break home with her family in Nebraska— it became harder for Andrea to hold her tongue - and harder for her parents not to hold theirs.
Mom didn’t like her short hair or the hole in her nose ( Andrea didn’t think she would notice —she removed the ring), they didn’t like that she wouldn’t eat ‘meat’....( food grandma prepared), grades were slipping, they didn’t know her friends, and the parents didn’t like what ‘the place’ was doing to their beautiful daughter —-it was like they didn’t even know who she was anymore.
Her mother wanted to know who Vivian was - The girl she heard her daughter talking to over the phone.
Andrea told her parents the truth: she was in love, “ after all, it was not a sin to ‘be’ homosexual; it was a sin to ‘act’ on it. And I—-“
Well, being raised a Catholic with moral strong role models didn’t sit right with her parents. Andrea could come home and attend a state school, but they would no longer pay that institution, at Reed College in Portland another cent.
Andrea makes her choice. She packs her bags and heads back to Portland to find a job, and a place to live, returning to her people. Broke - no school - a crappy low paying job- and a girlfriend who was into a nonmonogamy. The only person her former girlfriend didn’t want to have sex with was her: so basically a hurtful crappy ex-relationship too.
But .....life continued on in Portland.....
Queer Nights, sticky dark bars, cafes that were really dinners. Roots ran shallow. The queer Community clung fiercely to each other, yet they’d cheat or fall out and entire friend networks would break into pieces
We meet Ryan Coates, a close guy friend with Andrea. They are competitive scrabble buddies. And then they are more - Andrea was having a secret affair with Ryan. They would sneak off into different neighborhoods. For Andrea, the secret, not the sex, ....the nervous energy, the adrenaline, was a rush that radiated her continued heat.
“If you think It’s no big deal for a lesbian to fool around with a guy on the sly, you’re right, sort of, but you are also not living in Portland, Oregon, at the end of the 20th century as a card-carrying member of the Lesbian Mafia. It was as good as treason”.
“Double life was my specialty, honed during my teen years - my formative mode. I picked it right back up”.
If this book wasn’t already a page turner from page 1 —IT WAS—your reading speed triples with curiosity once Andrea is pregnant with Ryan’s baby....I MEAN TRIPLES!!!
I kept thinking - I know this story - I know a couple where this happened to -
I remember these days of STAY CITY.....( from an arms distant - but not all ‘that’ far either).
The characters were wonderful- reinventing themselves the moment they leave home —- WOW.....I remember these days when my first born daughter went to college - as a Freshman in 1999.
Many of those cute wholesome looking girls in her Freshman class - right out of High School ..... were RUNNING to PLANNED PARENTHOOD- TATTOOED SHOPS- cutting off their hair - getting piercings - wearing army clothing -
She came home telling ‘me’..... that she needed to be a closet straight girl. Her Lesbian friends gave her the evil eye when she ‘liked’ wearing her girlie skirts - and MEN. They were funny days.
This book is funny - warm - real - ENJOYABLE!
FAVORITE QUOTE ABOUT THIS BOOK is: ( by Michelle Tea, award winning author of “Valencia”):
“A love letter to Portland in the 90’s, “Stay City”, is a gorgeous, funny, sharply spot-on tale of growing up and making family again and again and again”.
Exquisitely beautiful!!! This book could become a classic!!!
Thank you ( again and again and again)....Will Bynes and Harper Collins Publishing.
Creative - takes place in Portland!
“MY PEOPLE”
“ Portland in the Nineties was a lot like me: Broke, struggling with employment, mostly white, mostly hopeful even though there was no real change in sight. For all the drive-through espresso stands and downtown restoration, the new paint on aged bungalows and vintage glasses on young women, it was still an old industrial river town in a remote corner of the country. Hard to get to. Hard to leave”.
Andrea Morales, age 17, was from rural western Nebraska......
“where adulthood came hard and fast and narrow, and queers kept quiet or met violence”.
Andrea’s father was Mexican-American - born Catholic but casually faithful. Her mother, Caucasian-American was born a Lutheran who converted to Catholicism after marriage and attended mass every day.
Andrea’s plan was to go off to college - at Reed - in Portland.... get her college undergrad degree, find respectable work, and go on with her underground quiet life. She would come home for family gatherings at Christmas time. She would wear a sweet yellow skirt or sweater her mother gave her ‘which was so her’ - keep family peace - attend church - stay in the closet - then return to Portland to continue participating in LGBT student groups.
Andrea’s plan worked well enough during her Freshman Year of college. At school she was another young person seeking to find all the things you’d expect to find—
music, work, drugs, adulthood, refuge from adulthood, but mostly, seeking each other.
“Here I was no longer The Only but one of an ever-gathering crowd- Young forever, queer forever, friends forever, or so we all thought then. My people”.
Andrea’s plan broke down during her sophomore year of college. During Christmas break home with her family in Nebraska— it became harder for Andrea to hold her tongue - and harder for her parents not to hold theirs.
Mom didn’t like her short hair or the hole in her nose ( Andrea didn’t think she would notice —she removed the ring), they didn’t like that she wouldn’t eat ‘meat’....( food grandma prepared), grades were slipping, they didn’t know her friends, and the parents didn’t like what ‘the place’ was doing to their beautiful daughter —-it was like they didn’t even know who she was anymore.
Her mother wanted to know who Vivian was - The girl she heard her daughter talking to over the phone.
Andrea told her parents the truth: she was in love, “ after all, it was not a sin to ‘be’ homosexual; it was a sin to ‘act’ on it. And I—-“
Well, being raised a Catholic with moral strong role models didn’t sit right with her parents. Andrea could come home and attend a state school, but they would no longer pay that institution, at Reed College in Portland another cent.
Andrea makes her choice. She packs her bags and heads back to Portland to find a job, and a place to live, returning to her people. Broke - no school - a crappy low paying job- and a girlfriend who was into a nonmonogamy. The only person her former girlfriend didn’t want to have sex with was her: so basically a hurtful crappy ex-relationship too.
But .....life continued on in Portland.....
Queer Nights, sticky dark bars, cafes that were really dinners. Roots ran shallow. The queer Community clung fiercely to each other, yet they’d cheat or fall out and entire friend networks would break into pieces
We meet Ryan Coates, a close guy friend with Andrea. They are competitive scrabble buddies. And then they are more - Andrea was having a secret affair with Ryan. They would sneak off into different neighborhoods. For Andrea, the secret, not the sex, ....the nervous energy, the adrenaline, was a rush that radiated her continued heat.
“If you think It’s no big deal for a lesbian to fool around with a guy on the sly, you’re right, sort of, but you are also not living in Portland, Oregon, at the end of the 20th century as a card-carrying member of the Lesbian Mafia. It was as good as treason”.
“Double life was my specialty, honed during my teen years - my formative mode. I picked it right back up”.
If this book wasn’t already a page turner from page 1 —IT WAS—your reading speed triples with curiosity once Andrea is pregnant with Ryan’s baby....I MEAN TRIPLES!!!
I kept thinking - I know this story - I know a couple where this happened to -
I remember these days of STAY CITY.....( from an arms distant - but not all ‘that’ far either).
The characters were wonderful- reinventing themselves the moment they leave home —- WOW.....I remember these days when my first born daughter went to college - as a Freshman in 1999.
Many of those cute wholesome looking girls in her Freshman class - right out of High School ..... were RUNNING to PLANNED PARENTHOOD- TATTOOED SHOPS- cutting off their hair - getting piercings - wearing army clothing -
She came home telling ‘me’..... that she needed to be a closet straight girl. Her Lesbian friends gave her the evil eye when she ‘liked’ wearing her girlie skirts - and MEN. They were funny days.
This book is funny - warm - real - ENJOYABLE!
FAVORITE QUOTE ABOUT THIS BOOK is: ( by Michelle Tea, award winning author of “Valencia”):
“A love letter to Portland in the 90’s, “Stay City”, is a gorgeous, funny, sharply spot-on tale of growing up and making family again and again and again”.
Exquisitely beautiful!!! This book could become a classic!!!
Thank you ( again and again and again)....Will Bynes and Harper Collins Publishing.
March 19, 2018
4 high stars
Stray Friends was a lovely surprise. I had no expectations when I started this book, knowing nothing about the story or the author.
The first part of the story takes place in the late 1990s, focusing on Andrea in her early twenties in Portland, Oregon. Andrea (or Andie as she is known by her friends) is gay, and living an insulated life within her tight knit community of friends. At a crisis point in her life, Andie “strays” toward a relationship with a man, which puts her at odds with herself and her community. The second part of the story flashes forward ten years in Andrea’s life. There is so much to say about what happens to Andrea, but I want to avoid spoilers. There is a key and lovely turn to the story that is best experienced as you read it. And I loved the ending.
This is really a story about the extreme emotions, idealism and politics of youth, as compared with the tempered emotions and realism of adulthood. I found myself being impatient with Andie and her friends in the first part, but when I got to the second part I realized that this was the book’s narrative arc. The parts fit perfectly together.
The writing is very straightforward, but the emotions are potent and genuine. I would love to read this author’s next book.
Thank you to the publisher for giving me access to an advance copy.
Stray Friends was a lovely surprise. I had no expectations when I started this book, knowing nothing about the story or the author.
The first part of the story takes place in the late 1990s, focusing on Andrea in her early twenties in Portland, Oregon. Andrea (or Andie as she is known by her friends) is gay, and living an insulated life within her tight knit community of friends. At a crisis point in her life, Andie “strays” toward a relationship with a man, which puts her at odds with herself and her community. The second part of the story flashes forward ten years in Andrea’s life. There is so much to say about what happens to Andrea, but I want to avoid spoilers. There is a key and lovely turn to the story that is best experienced as you read it. And I loved the ending.
This is really a story about the extreme emotions, idealism and politics of youth, as compared with the tempered emotions and realism of adulthood. I found myself being impatient with Andie and her friends in the first part, but when I got to the second part I realized that this was the book’s narrative arc. The parts fit perfectly together.
The writing is very straightforward, but the emotions are potent and genuine. I would love to read this author’s next book.
Thank you to the publisher for giving me access to an advance copy.
March 10, 2018
A heartwarming and witty book about a lesbian who has sex with a man, gets pregnant, and decides to keep the baby. Though Stray City pays homage to a distinct setting and community - the lesbian underground scene of 90's Portland - its themes of identity, searching for belonging, and art are universal. The novel contains challenging scenes such as facing rejection from a homophobic biological family, followed by exclusion from a queer family of choice, as well as humorous and insightful one-liners about gender, heteronormative family structures, and coming of age. I am still mulling over how Andrea, our protagonist, operates both within and outside of traditional systems of connection, such as by still having a romantic partner but eschewing the institution of marriage.
A much-needed book in terms of representing queer and alternative characters and relationships, I would recommend Stray City to anyone searching for a novel that represents diversity in a meaningful way, with a rich and intelligent voice. For the sake of transparency, I was lucky enough to get an advanced reader's copy from the publisher for review.
A much-needed book in terms of representing queer and alternative characters and relationships, I would recommend Stray City to anyone searching for a novel that represents diversity in a meaningful way, with a rich and intelligent voice. For the sake of transparency, I was lucky enough to get an advanced reader's copy from the publisher for review.
May 18, 2018
“Portland in the Nineties was a lot like me - broke, struggling with employment, mostly white, mostly hopeful even though there was no real change in sight .” This initial sentence of Stray City grabbed me. By the end of the first page I had already highlighted three quotes. So I was all prepared to just love this novel. And I wish I could say the book kept up that level of intensity, but it didn’t. It dragged in places. It takes forever to get the story moving. The book could have used a much stricter editing job. Johnson does paint the place and the people so that you feel you are there. And what she really gets right is how each group has its rules and you break those rules at your own cost. “In some ways it was harder to come out as gay with one exception than as gay.”
I enjoyed the use of phone calls, postcards, emails and never sent letters to explain Ryan.
The second half of the book flashes forward ten years and moves along better. It explores the different concepts of family with loving understanding.
I received a free copy of this book from Goodreads in exchange for an honest review.
March 12, 2018
Andrea Morales was born and raised in rural Nebraska, part of a devout Catholic family. When she comes to the realization as a young teen that she is lesbian, she tries to be the best daughter she can be--never rebellious, good grades in school, attending mass regularly--in the hopes of storing up brownie points for the eventual day when she 'comes out' to her family.
Then in the late 1990s, 'Andy' goes off to college in Portland, Oregon and there, amongst a strong lesbian community, she can finally be free to be her true self, experimenting with love and having her heart broken a couple times along the way. Andy finds a new family here with these women but finds they also have rules and even what they call 'the Lesbian Mafia.'
So when Ryan Coates, a musician with the band Cold Shoulder, strikes up a friendship with her and that leads to other 'benefits,' Andy becomes confused. She knows she's a lesbian but why this attraction to a guy? Is it just because she's been feeling unattractive and unloved lately and his pursuit is a huge boost to her ego? And then she finds out she's pregnant--god, how will she tell her friends?!
This is terrific writing, delving deeply into relationships, friendship, family and love with great heart and humor. I could not put it down! Hard to believe this is Chelsey Johnson's debut--the voice is so authentic, the characters so real, just spot on.
I learned a lot from this book--I knew nothing about this community and very little about lesbian relationships--so this was quite new territory for me. I enjoy books that expand my horizons, increasing my understanding of people and love in all its myriad varieties.
Many thanks to Katherine Turro at HarperCollins/WilliamMorrow for providing me with a paperback advanced reader's edition of this insightful new book. Kudos! You have found a brilliant new author here.
Then in the late 1990s, 'Andy' goes off to college in Portland, Oregon and there, amongst a strong lesbian community, she can finally be free to be her true self, experimenting with love and having her heart broken a couple times along the way. Andy finds a new family here with these women but finds they also have rules and even what they call 'the Lesbian Mafia.'
So when Ryan Coates, a musician with the band Cold Shoulder, strikes up a friendship with her and that leads to other 'benefits,' Andy becomes confused. She knows she's a lesbian but why this attraction to a guy? Is it just because she's been feeling unattractive and unloved lately and his pursuit is a huge boost to her ego? And then she finds out she's pregnant--god, how will she tell her friends?!
This is terrific writing, delving deeply into relationships, friendship, family and love with great heart and humor. I could not put it down! Hard to believe this is Chelsey Johnson's debut--the voice is so authentic, the characters so real, just spot on.
I learned a lot from this book--I knew nothing about this community and very little about lesbian relationships--so this was quite new territory for me. I enjoy books that expand my horizons, increasing my understanding of people and love in all its myriad varieties.
Many thanks to Katherine Turro at HarperCollins/WilliamMorrow for providing me with a paperback advanced reader's edition of this insightful new book. Kudos! You have found a brilliant new author here.
November 18, 2018
Lesbian books written for straight people are just *icky*. I should have been on my guard when I noticed it was a large publishing house that released this rather than the struggling small presses who typically release books for us, but as a recent evacuee of Portland I felt a keen urge to see my city reflected in its pages. Homesickness kept me reading and saw me through to the end, but this book just left a bad taste in my mouth and put me in a funk. Looking at the people on my friend's list who have loved it I notice that they are, every single one, straight and many of their reviews pull quotes from the book about how the lesbian community is an insular, orthodox, fundamentalist monolith quite reminiscent of the parochial small towns that many of us have fled. As a lesbian who is a trans woman I have more than my share of criticisms about the lesbian community in general and the Portland lesbian community in particular, but so much of this book just feels like airing dirty laundry so the hets can feel good about themselves. I don't need that in my life, the hets will always find something to look down their noses at us and I can think of a dozen more compelling stories that can be told about that community than this.
I find it amusing that the narrator decries the vapidity of masturbatory spectacles for straight men in the film Chasing Amy but then goes on to create a 20-years-on version of the same story. Nothing ever changes. While it was nice to live for a moment in the Portland that is no longer, to revisit my own memories of the E Room and Satyricon, bars and venues now shuttered and replaced by condos that none of this book's characters (nor anyone I know) can afford to live in, it wasn't enough to make me enjoy reading this in the least.
I find it amusing that the narrator decries the vapidity of masturbatory spectacles for straight men in the film Chasing Amy but then goes on to create a 20-years-on version of the same story. Nothing ever changes. While it was nice to live for a moment in the Portland that is no longer, to revisit my own memories of the E Room and Satyricon, bars and venues now shuttered and replaced by condos that none of this book's characters (nor anyone I know) can afford to live in, it wasn't enough to make me enjoy reading this in the least.
January 21, 2022
Whew! This was really good, but also challenging for me, personally. Andrea and Ryan's relationship was painful to experience. It is interesting to read about something that I have definitely seen in real life, but never seen in a book: a lesbian who has sex with a man, but still isn't attracted to men. Andrea is looking for something else from the experience: an ease, an uncomplicated connection. An assurance of being wanted, both sexually and personally. Of course, this ends up getting very, very complicated, and that's what made it uncomfortable, but the ending is a breath of fresh air, and the beginning is great 90s lesbian nostalgia.
Full review at the Lesbrary.
Full review at the Lesbrary.
November 30, 2018
This "Tournament of Books 2019" longlistee is compulsively readable, and it was easy to tackle these well-written 432 pages in two days. In her debut novel, Johnson tells the story of Andrea Morales, a lesbian who has an affair with a male drummer, gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby - so at the core, this book talks about the importance of love and authenticity, as opposed to empty conventions. Andy breaks free from her Catholic family and finds friendship and understanding in Portland, and after challenging the hardcore conservative worldview of her family, she also challenges the mental concepts of her gay friends when she becomes a mother. Will she forever be a stray, or will Andy find a permanent home, a sense of belonging?
Johnson's message is certainly important, even though this book is most likely caught up in the classic dilemma: People who read it will think "well, yes, obviously", while the more narrow-minded folks who should read it will probably not pick it up in the first place - while the author can't be blamed for that, it still means that a lot of the text is preaching to the converted. So parts of the story might be undercomplex in that sense, but I appreciated that Johnson gave all of her characters some pretty unlikeable traits, which made them feel more real (except Andy's kid, whose coolness is, let's face it, way over the top). Both Andy and Ryan, the father of her child, have their flaws and mess up, which prevents the story from stumbling into fairy tale territory.
I have to admit though that some ardent simplifications bothered me. As I am a straight woman from Europe, I certainly cannot judge how lesbians in 90s Portland did talk to one another, but when Andy breaks the news that she's pregnant to her queer friends, they are grossed out and say stuff like "Men spread disease", "I'm really not comfortable with dudes around", and, when Andy defends Ryan, "Have you been away from straight men for so long that you've forgotten what they're really like?". So we have the cliché Catholic family (step 1), and then the cliché lesbians (step 2) - I see what purpose these serve in the plot (rejection of all toxic conventions), but was it really necessary to take it to these extremes to drive home the point?
Apart from the main issues, there are some other good ideas woven into the plot, e.g. regarding heritage, immigration, marriage, pushing the frontier (west/east), animals, and - try to catch that! - Paul Bunyan / John Bunyan. For all of its flaws, this coming of age novel certainly has a big heart and is fun to read.
Johnson's message is certainly important, even though this book is most likely caught up in the classic dilemma: People who read it will think "well, yes, obviously", while the more narrow-minded folks who should read it will probably not pick it up in the first place - while the author can't be blamed for that, it still means that a lot of the text is preaching to the converted. So parts of the story might be undercomplex in that sense, but I appreciated that Johnson gave all of her characters some pretty unlikeable traits, which made them feel more real (except Andy's kid, whose coolness is, let's face it, way over the top). Both Andy and Ryan, the father of her child, have their flaws and mess up, which prevents the story from stumbling into fairy tale territory.
I have to admit though that some ardent simplifications bothered me. As I am a straight woman from Europe, I certainly cannot judge how lesbians in 90s Portland did talk to one another, but when Andy breaks the news that she's pregnant to her queer friends, they are grossed out and say stuff like "Men spread disease", "I'm really not comfortable with dudes around", and, when Andy defends Ryan, "Have you been away from straight men for so long that you've forgotten what they're really like?". So we have the cliché Catholic family (step 1), and then the cliché lesbians (step 2) - I see what purpose these serve in the plot (rejection of all toxic conventions), but was it really necessary to take it to these extremes to drive home the point?
Apart from the main issues, there are some other good ideas woven into the plot, e.g. regarding heritage, immigration, marriage, pushing the frontier (west/east), animals, and - try to catch that! - Paul Bunyan / John Bunyan. For all of its flaws, this coming of age novel certainly has a big heart and is fun to read.
March 7, 2018
I received a free copy of Stray City by Chelsey Johnson from Goodreads for my review.
A very well-told nicely written debut novel. The main character, Andrea, who is a lesbian, has a fling with a heterosexual guy named Ryan. Ryan is a rocker. Andrea gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby. The book is entertaining, funny, and very emotional. It will tug on your heart-strings for a long time.
A very well-told nicely written debut novel. The main character, Andrea, who is a lesbian, has a fling with a heterosexual guy named Ryan. Ryan is a rocker. Andrea gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby. The book is entertaining, funny, and very emotional. It will tug on your heart-strings for a long time.
March 15, 2018
Thank you, William Morrow for sending me, "Stray City" by Chelsey Johnson, in exchange for an honest review.
I really liked the emotional integrity of this novel. I enjoyed Andrea and Ryan's unconventional "relationship". The writing, plot, and the overall tone was witty, refreshing, smart, and an absolute pleasure to read. The only thing that really irked me was that the narrative switches to third person 300 pages in. I felt frustrated and a little detached from the story after that occurred. I wished the whole novel would've stayed in first person narrative.
It's funny, even though Andrea is the main protagonist, I felt oddly connected to Ryan, even though he makes a life-changing mistake halfway through the novel. I guess I felt empathy for him. He's a well written male character (which is hard to find in contemporary fiction). I could really feel his resentment over the way Andrea jerks him around (she keeps their relationship a secret because she's a lesbian).
I loved the whole late '90s nostalgia feel of "Stray City". It was such a simpler time before smartphones and social media consumed our lives. Chelsey Johnson is a damn good storyteller. A zippy but edgy debut. This book is scheduled to be released March 20, 2018. Enjoy!
I really liked the emotional integrity of this novel. I enjoyed Andrea and Ryan's unconventional "relationship". The writing, plot, and the overall tone was witty, refreshing, smart, and an absolute pleasure to read. The only thing that really irked me was that the narrative switches to third person 300 pages in. I felt frustrated and a little detached from the story after that occurred. I wished the whole novel would've stayed in first person narrative.
It's funny, even though Andrea is the main protagonist, I felt oddly connected to Ryan, even though he makes a life-changing mistake halfway through the novel. I guess I felt empathy for him. He's a well written male character (which is hard to find in contemporary fiction). I could really feel his resentment over the way Andrea jerks him around (she keeps their relationship a secret because she's a lesbian).
I loved the whole late '90s nostalgia feel of "Stray City". It was such a simpler time before smartphones and social media consumed our lives. Chelsey Johnson is a damn good storyteller. A zippy but edgy debut. This book is scheduled to be released March 20, 2018. Enjoy!
March 19, 2019
I really liked this book. It felt very honest and authentic about queer community/belonging (90s lesbian Portland, to be specific), good and bad. Andrea is a 24-year-old lesbian reeling from a breakup. She ends up in this kind of relationship w/ a guy, who she likes but isn't really attracted to. It's more an easy connection and validation. Things get complicated when she gets accidentally pregnant. Smart writing and insights that felt so true to my experiences (again, good and bad).
I wish Johnson had spent less time on Andrea's relationship with Ryan and more time on her friends in the earlier section and/or expanded the later part with her daughter and new partner. I was a bit bored by him and felt like I was waiting for him to be out of the picture and for Andrea to get on with her "real" story. It's clear from the beginning she's not really into him, and the process of waiting for them to break up felt like it took too long and too much narrative space.
I wish Johnson had spent less time on Andrea's relationship with Ryan and more time on her friends in the earlier section and/or expanded the later part with her daughter and new partner. I was a bit bored by him and felt like I was waiting for him to be out of the picture and for Andrea to get on with her "real" story. It's clear from the beginning she's not really into him, and the process of waiting for them to break up felt like it took too long and too much narrative space.
July 3, 2018
I won a copy via Goodreads giveaways in exchange for an honest review. All my opinions are my own.:)
----
This one was a mixed bag throughout for me. I kept going through the cycle of "Pretty good", "Hmm... not sure" "Annoying" "Boring"
The atmosphere was good but I never really connected to the main people themselves. I was interested enough to continue but it didn't much rise beyond that.
That sounds super vague but I never really know what to say sometimes when I think a book is just "okay." Sometimes my friends will ask me for more details and I can come up with a few but most of the time I tell them to go see for themselves if they want.
The best I cane come up with is that I felt... at a remove from it all. Andrea has her reasons for keeping people at arm's length and some close and so does Ryan but... it felt like I was getting only a surface glimpse even with the personal stuff.
Does that make less sense? Haha... I tried *sheepish face*
At times I wanted to smack everyone in turn too. I can understand sort of to a point, but that was my "in the moment" reaction.
The ending... a non-ending? It felt definitive in its abrupt way... I reached the page and when there was no more, I had to go back and re-read the last few paragraphs again to clarify for myself and think a bit.
It wasn't bad.... it was kind of meh, for me anyway... I wanted to know more about what happened with everyone. Not everything under the sun mind you, but... up to a certain point.
The first half or so was intense and the stuff we got from Ryan's POV was a good addition but after that it just... seemed to stall and lose steam. I did like the way family was portrayed but that was about it.
So the rating? The writing was good still, even if I didn't fall in love with the book.
Skimming through ratings, it seems like I'm in the minority and that's okay... I'm glad if you loved this book... I just wish I could have too,
Happy reading! (This review is a confused mess haha)
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This one was a mixed bag throughout for me. I kept going through the cycle of "Pretty good", "Hmm... not sure" "Annoying" "Boring"
The atmosphere was good but I never really connected to the main people themselves. I was interested enough to continue but it didn't much rise beyond that.
That sounds super vague but I never really know what to say sometimes when I think a book is just "okay." Sometimes my friends will ask me for more details and I can come up with a few but most of the time I tell them to go see for themselves if they want.
The best I cane come up with is that I felt... at a remove from it all. Andrea has her reasons for keeping people at arm's length and some close and so does Ryan but... it felt like I was getting only a surface glimpse even with the personal stuff.
Does that make less sense? Haha... I tried *sheepish face*
At times I wanted to smack everyone in turn too. I can understand sort of to a point, but that was my "in the moment" reaction.
The ending... a non-ending? It felt definitive in its abrupt way... I reached the page and when there was no more, I had to go back and re-read the last few paragraphs again to clarify for myself and think a bit.
It wasn't bad.... it was kind of meh, for me anyway... I wanted to know more about what happened with everyone. Not everything under the sun mind you, but... up to a certain point.
The first half or so was intense and the stuff we got from Ryan's POV was a good addition but after that it just... seemed to stall and lose steam. I did like the way family was portrayed but that was about it.
So the rating? The writing was good still, even if I didn't fall in love with the book.
Skimming through ratings, it seems like I'm in the minority and that's okay... I'm glad if you loved this book... I just wish I could have too,
Happy reading! (This review is a confused mess haha)
June 22, 2019
I realize I'm the odd person out here with my 2 star review; however, I was really disappointed by this book. It reads like a diary of an unfortunately annoying person in a very judgmental community. Instead of highlighting the openness of queer community, this paints a very specific picture of one group at a given time.
There is no creativity or innovation in this novel. SO much of the book is spent chronicling a heterosexual relationship even though a number of characters complain about hetero privilege. More time is spent on the story between Ryan and Andrea than on any lesbian relationship. The one that is introduced comes out of nowhere with very little context because the narrative has shifted to focus on Lucia. There are also problems with changing narrative voice without warning. I forgot how much I dislike diaryesque narratives. Not a strong debut in my opinion.
There is no creativity or innovation in this novel. SO much of the book is spent chronicling a heterosexual relationship even though a number of characters complain about hetero privilege. More time is spent on the story between Ryan and Andrea than on any lesbian relationship. The one that is introduced comes out of nowhere with very little context because the narrative has shifted to focus on Lucia. There are also problems with changing narrative voice without warning. I forgot how much I dislike diaryesque narratives. Not a strong debut in my opinion.
April 10, 2018
4.5 This ended pretty abruptly--I actually flipped back to double check--but it didn't end poorly. I just wanted so much more of the story! Excellent debut novel with wonderful characters!
December 10, 2021
"Tell me about girls."
I was in a T-shirt and underwear, knees straddling his sides.
"What do you mean?" I said, unbuttoning his jeans. "You've been with girls."
"What is it you like about them?"
I studied his eyes. "No," I said. I leaned forward and kissed his lips: a quick, firm, closed-mouthed kiss.
"What's it like?" he persisted.
I said, "It's not like in porn. And it's not like this. And it's not for you to know."
I kissed him again, purposefully, planting a seal, and he wisely let it go.
—p.121
The synopsis on Stray City's front-cover flap gives away most of the plot's major beats. A committed lesbian in Portland, Oregon, commits the ultimate betrayal—sex with a guy—and, not too much later, she must contend with undeniable evidence of her transgression: she's pregnant.
Sure, half the book goes by before this comes to light, but even so it's not a spoiler—because that simplistic summary cannot possibly convey the melody of Chelsey Johnson's lyrical first novel.
Fine was the loneliest place a person could be.
—p.87
This probably won't be the case for you, to be sure, but as a Portland resident since 1994... so much about Stray City resonates with me. I too remember going to La Luna, and feeling the sound system there that made my chest vibrate in sympathy—and I, too, fondly remember karaoke at the Alibi, the tiki bar in North Portland, where I once sang the Violent Femmes' "Kiss Off" to a bunch of Unitarians while stone cold sober (true story!). The KJ approved, at least...
Grace notes, like Chelsey Johnson's reference to the master luthiers at The 12th Fret, on Belmont (p.146), are not the kind of detail you'd get from casual surfing, either—Johnson knows Portland, even if her author bio doesn't mention our town at all, and Stray City is, among other things, a love letter to a largely (though not entirely!) bygone version of the city I now call home.
Stray City is already an historical novel—a period piece. "VIDEOTAPE" is the name of one later chapter, even—but the observations are more current than that would imply:
Even with the economy's recent yearlong plummet, none of them could afford to live anymore in the neighborhoods where they'd come of age.Johnson's novel ably captures the changing face of Portland. And what I originally thought were false notes turned out to be my own mistakes—yes, Buckman is the arts school Johnson meant (Da Vinci, the one I was thinking, is the middle school that feeds into Buckman High), and you probably do need a bear hang when camping in certain parts of the Mount Hood National Forest.
{...}
They couldn't even afford to live in Meena's Belmont duplex, which she was able to rent out for three times the late-1990s mortgage she was paying, partially funding her new life in L.A. Hatchbacks and hoopties gave way to strollers and Outbacks. One corner of the Pearl warehouse where they'd mounted their queer art show now housed a coffee shop with a $10,000 espresso machine, and the rest contained a store that sold hand-tanned leather couches that cost five figures and decor gathered—no, "curated"—from around the globe{...}
—p.356-357
*
Stray City is not a place that's gone astray (although there's ample evidence for that as well). Rather, Portland is (or at least was) a place for strays—for "stray and stranger birds like me," to quote one of my favorite lines from Jane Eyre.
Johnson has a gift for description, for sounding right, even when she's technically wrong:
The guy was rootless without the ache, unlike everyone else I knew. He was hydroponic. He got everything he needed from the air, it seemed.The word for that kind of plant is actually an epiphyte—but still we know exactly what Andrea means.
—p.110
More good vocabulary—and this one's entirely descriptive:
All photos were gerunds.
—p.362
*
Will, you were right: Stray City is an amazing debut, a book I went through slowly, like driving through scenery I was coming back to after a long time away, savoring every view... although I did sometimes wonder how much of Chelsey Johnson went into Andrea (or vice versa), and about what she could do for an encore.
But those are questions for another night. For now, let's just enjoy the show.
I knew I shouldn't say yes. But knowing better, alas, has never stopped me from wanting. I said, "More, please."
—p.43
December 4, 2018
I initially picked up this book at the library because of the cat on the cover. I can't resist anything with cats, and the little blurb on the inside of the front cover seemed promising, so I took it home without a second thought.
I enjoyed the first part of the book and was letting it meander along, right up until the point where all the characters shit all over people who are bisexual. For a book where all the characters are members of an oppressed community and they preach inclusion and smashing the patriarchy and fuck heteronormativity... it was disconcerting to then read, "bisexual was the earnest white girl in your women's studies class who had a nice boyfriend and wanted to clock in a little more oppression." Damn, Johnson.
I would have just written that comment off as the asshole judgment of asshole characters, but there's something about the way it was written that made it feel different. The book harks on this idea of sexuality being defined solely by who you do or don't sleep with. The characters express this idea in a myriad of ways - hell, there's even a group of lesbians who form a band called the Gold Stars to indicate that none of them have ever slept with a man. (Because there's only one way to be a lesbian, right? According to these characters - yes.) So I desperately wanted to just write off the bisexual comments as more exclusionary nonsense from characters with very narrow world-views, which would have been ironic and maybe enjoyable, but the way the biting commentary continued for almost a full page started to feel less like a character's world-view and more like the author grinding out her own personal vendetta. Maybe that's really how lesbians living in Portland in the nineties felt about those who were bisexual - I'll never know - and maybe Johnson was just trying to reflect that hypocrisy in her work, but it really missed the mark and seemed like a genuine opinion pushing through the narrative rather than the strongly-held belief of a fictional character.
Ultimately, the book also took way too long to get to the point. Normally, I love character-driven books that lack a defined plot, but after being really pulled out of the story by the aforementioned ugliness, it was difficult to immerse myself back into this world that moved much too slowly. 100-150 pages could have easily been cut and the story wouldn't have been any worse off. Too often, the author told us what was happening instead of showing us and letting us interpret things. Leave a little to the imagination, you know?
Andrea was also insufferable. I love a good, flawed protagonist, but something about her character just made me want to shake her and I did not sympathize with her at all through the second and third parts of the book. Speaking of the third part, I was interested in how her child would be portrayed and was left disappointed, yet again. How many times do we need to be told how cool Lucia is? Again, show, don't tell. (Also, leave the manic pixie dream child shit to John Green. He's cornered that market already.)
The cat, while rarely featured, seemed like a sweetheart, so I'll throw an extra star Stray City's way. Like I said, I just can't resist a cat.
I enjoyed the first part of the book and was letting it meander along, right up until the point where all the characters shit all over people who are bisexual. For a book where all the characters are members of an oppressed community and they preach inclusion and smashing the patriarchy and fuck heteronormativity... it was disconcerting to then read, "bisexual was the earnest white girl in your women's studies class who had a nice boyfriend and wanted to clock in a little more oppression." Damn, Johnson.
I would have just written that comment off as the asshole judgment of asshole characters, but there's something about the way it was written that made it feel different. The book harks on this idea of sexuality being defined solely by who you do or don't sleep with. The characters express this idea in a myriad of ways - hell, there's even a group of lesbians who form a band called the Gold Stars to indicate that none of them have ever slept with a man. (Because there's only one way to be a lesbian, right? According to these characters - yes.) So I desperately wanted to just write off the bisexual comments as more exclusionary nonsense from characters with very narrow world-views, which would have been ironic and maybe enjoyable, but the way the biting commentary continued for almost a full page started to feel less like a character's world-view and more like the author grinding out her own personal vendetta. Maybe that's really how lesbians living in Portland in the nineties felt about those who were bisexual - I'll never know - and maybe Johnson was just trying to reflect that hypocrisy in her work, but it really missed the mark and seemed like a genuine opinion pushing through the narrative rather than the strongly-held belief of a fictional character.
Ultimately, the book also took way too long to get to the point. Normally, I love character-driven books that lack a defined plot, but after being really pulled out of the story by the aforementioned ugliness, it was difficult to immerse myself back into this world that moved much too slowly. 100-150 pages could have easily been cut and the story wouldn't have been any worse off. Too often, the author told us what was happening instead of showing us and letting us interpret things. Leave a little to the imagination, you know?
Andrea was also insufferable. I love a good, flawed protagonist, but something about her character just made me want to shake her and I did not sympathize with her at all through the second and third parts of the book. Speaking of the third part, I was interested in how her child would be portrayed and was left disappointed, yet again. How many times do we need to be told how cool Lucia is? Again, show, don't tell. (Also, leave the manic pixie dream child shit to John Green. He's cornered that market already.)
The cat, while rarely featured, seemed like a sweetheart, so I'll throw an extra star Stray City's way. Like I said, I just can't resist a cat.
March 7, 2019
I don't require all of my favorite fiction to demonstrate proper reverence for cats. But it doesn't hurt.
Llewyn Davis, Oscar Isaac, and the Coen brothers also know from cats
This warm, lovely story of 1990s Pacific Northwest bohemians will fulfill a need you didn't even know you had. Let me digress: in 1973, genius music producer David Geffen met and fell deeply in love with Cher. Their affair in no way altered his sexual orientation as a gay man (duh). In the years since, Geffen has been refreshingly forthright and philosophical about his unlikely soulmate. "I know, Cher!" he says sunnily, and gives a wonderstruck Gallic shrug. Who can explain all the variations of love?
Stray City author Chelsey Johnson throws her very likable Pacific Northwesterners into a similar but slightly less idyllic situation. And their lives get very messy indeed. Sorting the fallout takes a decade, and along the way Johnson treats us to unsentimental (but comforting) insights on our yearning for acceptance, belonging, and security. All of this, plus Portland's music scene! Don't even try to resist.
I just finished the book, and already I miss the characters. Especially the youngest ones and their band, the Tiny Spiny Hedgehogs.
Llewyn Davis, Oscar Isaac, and the Coen brothers also know from cats
This warm, lovely story of 1990s Pacific Northwest bohemians will fulfill a need you didn't even know you had. Let me digress: in 1973, genius music producer David Geffen met and fell deeply in love with Cher. Their affair in no way altered his sexual orientation as a gay man (duh). In the years since, Geffen has been refreshingly forthright and philosophical about his unlikely soulmate. "I know, Cher!" he says sunnily, and gives a wonderstruck Gallic shrug. Who can explain all the variations of love?
Stray City author Chelsey Johnson throws her very likable Pacific Northwesterners into a similar but slightly less idyllic situation. And their lives get very messy indeed. Sorting the fallout takes a decade, and along the way Johnson treats us to unsentimental (but comforting) insights on our yearning for acceptance, belonging, and security. All of this, plus Portland's music scene! Don't even try to resist.
I just finished the book, and already I miss the characters. Especially the youngest ones and their band, the Tiny Spiny Hedgehogs.
November 16, 2018
This is be a DNF for me. I'm halfway in and feeling bait and switched by a book I thought would be about lesbians that's so far about how thrilling and fulfilling it is to finally find the right heterosexual relationship with a wholesome dude and how catty and self-victimizing gay women are.
I recognize that all communities have toxic subsections but when all female characters and all gay secondary characters are terrible people within a story it seems marked. And at this point halfway in, the whole theme of the narrative seems to be having LGBT characters state a believe about homophobia or sexism and immediately flipping the script so the single male character is cast as the oppressed and misjudged minority.
And it's just not that fun to read - I'm putting this one down for good now that a lesbian character has told a pregnant friend that she'd rather hear she'd been raped than that she'd slept with a man willingly! The plot drags and drags - the back cover blurb describes this book as being about a lesbian mother who conceived a child after sleeping with a man while on the rebound from a breakup, but the entire first half of the book is instead just repetitive scenes of this woman and her secret boyfriend's slow burn relationship development and lesbians being shitty to each other!
I recognize that all communities have toxic subsections but when all female characters and all gay secondary characters are terrible people within a story it seems marked. And at this point halfway in, the whole theme of the narrative seems to be having LGBT characters state a believe about homophobia or sexism and immediately flipping the script so the single male character is cast as the oppressed and misjudged minority.
And it's just not that fun to read - I'm putting this one down for good now that a lesbian character has told a pregnant friend that she'd rather hear she'd been raped than that she'd slept with a man willingly! The plot drags and drags - the back cover blurb describes this book as being about a lesbian mother who conceived a child after sleeping with a man while on the rebound from a breakup, but the entire first half of the book is instead just repetitive scenes of this woman and her secret boyfriend's slow burn relationship development and lesbians being shitty to each other!
November 29, 2017
In 1999, when this book takes place, I was a 19 year old kid finding queer community/family in Vermont, a place that is often compared to Oregon. I recognized a lot of Andrea's life in my own, though thankfully not the fundie parents, and the need to flee.
Andrea's story is believable, and complex. She loves her friends and feels complicated about her desire for a man despite her adamantly lesbian identity. I enjoyed her relationships, her love of music, their potluck dinners.
Fast forward 10 years, and Andrea's daughter Lucia is a little guitar-playing badass.
This is a book full of love, chosen family, and lots of nostalgia. I recommend it to all my 90s queer chosen family/rock lovers/buddies. You'll see yourselves here. <3
Andrea's story is believable, and complex. She loves her friends and feels complicated about her desire for a man despite her adamantly lesbian identity. I enjoyed her relationships, her love of music, their potluck dinners.
Fast forward 10 years, and Andrea's daughter Lucia is a little guitar-playing badass.
This is a book full of love, chosen family, and lots of nostalgia. I recommend it to all my 90s queer chosen family/rock lovers/buddies. You'll see yourselves here. <3
November 16, 2019
I really liked this story of finding oneself and finding family. There is such a lovely sense of hope throughout this story, as Andrea moves to Portland from Nebraska, and comes out as a lesbian. She finds a community in the city, which is particularly important after her parents don’t take her news well. After a failed relationship, and rebound sex, she finds herself pregnant. And facing a variety of responses from angry and disgusted, to supporting, from her circle of lesbian friends. (I did take issue with some of the women’s accusations of bisexuality, and dismissal of bisexuals. Though, it was probably a sentiment held more commonly in the past.)
The book takes Andrea from her university years to raising her daughter Lucia, and dealing with some tough questions from the girl.
I loved the characters and how they muddled their way along, building and breaking relationships, while learning more about themselves. Andrea’s path through moving to a new city, realizing she was a lesbian, finding friends, sex and love, becoming a mother, and raising a terrific daughter were beautifully handled. I found myself wanting to spend more time with these characters when I came to the novel’s end; definitely a sign that this was an enjoyable book.
The book takes Andrea from her university years to raising her daughter Lucia, and dealing with some tough questions from the girl.
I loved the characters and how they muddled their way along, building and breaking relationships, while learning more about themselves. Andrea’s path through moving to a new city, realizing she was a lesbian, finding friends, sex and love, becoming a mother, and raising a terrific daughter were beautifully handled. I found myself wanting to spend more time with these characters when I came to the novel’s end; definitely a sign that this was an enjoyable book.
July 5, 2018
Full disclaimer: tried my best, was mega put-off by the blatant bi-phobia a few chapters in, then put it down with the plan to return it to the library asap. Then I picked it up again and quickly skimmed the end and that bit was okay, but honestly, I am just so sick of reading things - books, articles, Facebook posts/comments/rants, anything - about bi-phobia and erasure in the LGBT+ community. Maybe if I'd kept reading it would have gotten better, I can't say, but the little that I did read was very off-putting: a lesbian sleeps with a man, ends up pregnant, tells her lesbian/gay friends, and they flip out. Their reaction was horrifying. Maybe appropriate for the time and totally plausible for the community (even today's community, tbh), but it just made me want to cry. I was so disappointed. I really wanted to like this. (I think the first person POV might have also put me off a bit, but for the most part, the second I hit those terrible reactions, I was done).
November 27, 2017
Stray City is a phenomenal book - you will fall in love with Andrea and her chosen family, and adorable Lucia. The writing is absolutely beautiful, this is a profound story about home and family.
March 15, 2018
Chelsey Johnson is a talent. Her words and sentences are colorful, smart, and edgy and you can feel every emotion she conveys. Her characters are flawed but realistic and though the story features queer women, as cisgender, I still found it all incredibly accessible.
Stray City is a hopeful story of the family you have and the family you create, love and affection in all its forms, and what it was like to be queer and in Portland in the 1990’s.
A truly unmissable novel.
Stray City is a hopeful story of the family you have and the family you create, love and affection in all its forms, and what it was like to be queer and in Portland in the 1990’s.
A truly unmissable novel.
March 28, 2018
ARC received from publisher
When I first read the back of this book, I thought, "Oh no, this is going to be a book filled with stereotypical lesbian and gay characters from Portland in the '90's." I could not have been more wrong. Sure there are LBGTQ characters in a time long before the term LBGTQ existed. However, these characters are real people with real problems who happen to fit in with each other. At it's heart this is a story about family.
Andrea is a lesbian trying to get away from her family in Nebraska so she goes to college in Portland. She finds her "people" and her family disowns her. This novel is about the strays we really all are coming together to form a family. A family that probably isn't a mom, dad and 2 children. But the family of our making, with people who love us and "get" us like no one else does.
This is the best book I've read all year and I can't wait to pass it on to friends! I cannot recommend it highly enough!
When I first read the back of this book, I thought, "Oh no, this is going to be a book filled with stereotypical lesbian and gay characters from Portland in the '90's." I could not have been more wrong. Sure there are LBGTQ characters in a time long before the term LBGTQ existed. However, these characters are real people with real problems who happen to fit in with each other. At it's heart this is a story about family.
Andrea is a lesbian trying to get away from her family in Nebraska so she goes to college in Portland. She finds her "people" and her family disowns her. This novel is about the strays we really all are coming together to form a family. A family that probably isn't a mom, dad and 2 children. But the family of our making, with people who love us and "get" us like no one else does.
This is the best book I've read all year and I can't wait to pass it on to friends! I cannot recommend it highly enough!
April 17, 2018
A light - but still satisfyingly meaty - book that burrows deep into its main character, Andrea, a proud member of the "Lesbian Mafia" in late-90s Portland who hooks up with a guy while on the rebound and accidentally gets pregnant. It's such a great depiction of the time period, of complicated relationship and sexual identity. None of the characters are perfect, including Andrea, her posse of friends, or her (kind of?) boyfriend, Ryan, but they're all incredibly relatable. I especially loved the nuance of the interactions between Andrea and Ryan - I feel like it would have been very easy to paint him as a player just trying to "turn" her, but there's a lot of unexpected sweetness between them even as their inherent incompatibility becomes clearer.
This is probably my favourite read of the year so far and is very close to 5 stars - if it sticks around in my head long enough, it may get bumped up.
This is probably my favourite read of the year so far and is very close to 5 stars - if it sticks around in my head long enough, it may get bumped up.
May 14, 2018
An authentic, warm and engaging novel that reveals the ache of finding oneself, a longing to belong and the challenging and sometimes conflicted decisions that need to be made in life. Raised in a Catholic family in Nebraska, Andrea Morales knows she has to move away if she wants to be herself and live her life freely. College is the opportunity and she heads to Portland, Ore., in the 1990s to enroll in Reed College - where student activism, art and liberalism fuel her. She blossoms and thrives in the lesbian world of Portland. For the first time in her life she is free to be her true self, feels a sense of belonging in the “lesbian mafia” - family to her - and has a great partner. Although she struggles financially to make ends meet by working several jobs, overall things are going rather well. But then her partner breaks up with her, she tries to pick up the pieces and as she's trying to do that - unwittingly becomes involved with a guy… First-time novelist Chelsey Johnson has delivered a funny, smart and endearing page-turner while presenting the challenges and pressures that many in the gay community deal with everyday, and especially back in the ‘90s. I enjoyed how the story unfolded - in the first person through Andrea to start out, in the first person through the guy for a short time and then in the third person as the story wrapped up. As well, the use of notes, lists, calls, etc. was highly effective in creating an intimacy between the characters and sharing an immediate insight for the reader - nicely done! Very much enjoyed the book and would highly recommend it.
April 25, 2018
I was pulled right in to Andrea Morales's Lesbian Mafia life in Portland, Oregon in the 1990's. Johnson artfully uses the first person to describe Andrea's point of view after "escaping" from Nebraska. So many passages are captivating and funny and surprising. For example:
"Meena had intel that the coffee girl was straight--one of those girls who affects android queer chic and looks heartbreakingly good in it but actually only dates men. We resented this kind of girl."
Andrea's life was so different from mine I wanted to read the novel straight through--except for one big thing: One of the biggest surprises of the novel is disclosed right in the book summary on Amazon. Usually, a book summary doesn't give away more than what's in about the first 20% of the book. Not so with Stray City. The big surprise doesn't happen until almost 50% of the way through the novel. It was horrible reading the first half of the novel knowing what was going to happen to Andrea. Goodbye tension. I have no idea why the publishers decided to give that part of the novel away.
Secondly, after the big secret that was spoiled by the summary, there is a huge jolt in the writing. The time period jumps forward nearly 11 years. There is no warning and it's not a graceful entrance into this time capsule. As a reader, we're flung into the future with no explanation of what happened in the meantime. It didn't work for me.
I went ahead and gave the book 4 stars because the writing was so good, and Andrea was so interesting. In fact, all of the characters were interesting. Johnson has character development nailed. If you want to read a book about the lesbian underworld in the '90's, where the idea of marriage has not caught on, where a Lesbian Mafia exists, where you want to be in a 90's lesbian's head and know what they think about men and women and how they fit in society, you'll like this book. I did.
"Meena had intel that the coffee girl was straight--one of those girls who affects android queer chic and looks heartbreakingly good in it but actually only dates men. We resented this kind of girl."
Andrea's life was so different from mine I wanted to read the novel straight through--except for one big thing: One of the biggest surprises of the novel is disclosed right in the book summary on Amazon. Usually, a book summary doesn't give away more than what's in about the first 20% of the book. Not so with Stray City. The big surprise doesn't happen until almost 50% of the way through the novel. It was horrible reading the first half of the novel knowing what was going to happen to Andrea. Goodbye tension. I have no idea why the publishers decided to give that part of the novel away.
Secondly, after the big secret that was spoiled by the summary, there is a huge jolt in the writing. The time period jumps forward nearly 11 years. There is no warning and it's not a graceful entrance into this time capsule. As a reader, we're flung into the future with no explanation of what happened in the meantime. It didn't work for me.
I went ahead and gave the book 4 stars because the writing was so good, and Andrea was so interesting. In fact, all of the characters were interesting. Johnson has character development nailed. If you want to read a book about the lesbian underworld in the '90's, where the idea of marriage has not caught on, where a Lesbian Mafia exists, where you want to be in a 90's lesbian's head and know what they think about men and women and how they fit in society, you'll like this book. I did.
February 3, 2018
I legitimately picked this book up just because it had a cat on it that looked kind of liked my cat and let me tell you, I am incredibly glad I did. It had everything I wanted in a book—punk, lesbians, romance, stray animals, and a look at life in a very artsy town. I didn’t love all of it—I especially did not appreciate the diatribe on bisexuals not being a valid identity, though I do get that’s how a lot of people view that. Overall, though, the relationships and characters in this book were beautifully written, with quirky humor and deep seated flaws that made them come off the page. The descriptions in this book were amazing, too, drawing me in perfectly but never to the point of “oh my god we get it, shut up already!”
The narrative style wandered quite a bit throughout this book, jumping from first person to third to postcards and phone calls, but instead of being jarring, it was done expertly and made the book that more enjoyable.
Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone and I’m incredibly excited for it to be officially published so I can share it with everyone.
The narrative style wandered quite a bit throughout this book, jumping from first person to third to postcards and phone calls, but instead of being jarring, it was done expertly and made the book that more enjoyable.
Overall, I highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone and I’m incredibly excited for it to be officially published so I can share it with everyone.
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