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Weekend
On her fiftieth birthday, crazy-in-love Ajax visits her mercurial lover Logan, who trails their tarnished reputation like a lapsed halo. Logan has secrets, but so does Ajax, and during their weekend getaway to Ontario's cottage country, some of these secrets will prove explosive.
In the next cottage, long-term couple Joe and Elliot are having their own challenges as the parents of a newborn baby girl. Joe isn't sure if Elliot loves her or even if Elliot wanted a baby at all. Can she make it through a weekend feeling as she does, let alone the rest of her life?
Jane Eaton Hamilton's ninth book is an intimate, sexy queer romance. 'Weekend' is a bold and heartbreaking consideration of the true nature of love at the cusp of middle age--about trust, negotiation, and what's worth keeping in the end.
LGBTQ+, trans, transgender, non-binary, enby, lesbian, couples, poly, monogamy, romance, violence, literature, disability, marriage
#ownvoices
FICTION / Erotica / Trans
FICTION / Erotica / Lesbian
DRAMA / LGBT
FICTION / Romance / LGBT / General
FICTION / Romance / LGBT / Trans
FICTION / Romance / LGBT / Lesbian
SOCIAL SCIENCE / LGBT Studies / General
SOCIAL SCIENCE / LGBT Studies / Gay Studies
SOCIAL SCIENCE / LGBT Studies / Lesbian Studies
TRAVEL / Special Interest / LGBT
In the next cottage, long-term couple Joe and Elliot are having their own challenges as the parents of a newborn baby girl. Joe isn't sure if Elliot loves her or even if Elliot wanted a baby at all. Can she make it through a weekend feeling as she does, let alone the rest of her life?
Jane Eaton Hamilton's ninth book is an intimate, sexy queer romance. 'Weekend' is a bold and heartbreaking consideration of the true nature of love at the cusp of middle age--about trust, negotiation, and what's worth keeping in the end.
LGBTQ+, trans, transgender, non-binary, enby, lesbian, couples, poly, monogamy, romance, violence, literature, disability, marriage
#ownvoices
FICTION / Erotica / Trans
FICTION / Erotica / Lesbian
DRAMA / LGBT
FICTION / Romance / LGBT / General
FICTION / Romance / LGBT / Trans
FICTION / Romance / LGBT / Lesbian
SOCIAL SCIENCE / LGBT Studies / General
SOCIAL SCIENCE / LGBT Studies / Gay Studies
SOCIAL SCIENCE / LGBT Studies / Lesbian Studies
TRAVEL / Special Interest / LGBT
Unknown Binding
First published May 10, 2016
13 people are currently reading
905 people want to read
About the author
Eaton Hamilton
45 books82 followersEaton Hamilton is the queer disabled Canadian author of ten books (incl 2 chapbooks) of short fiction, poetry and memoir. They are non-binary, go by "Hamlton" and are legally " Eaton Hamilton." Their novel ,‘Weekend,' called a "tour de force" by the Vancouver Sun, appeared in 2016. Their memoir ‘Mondays are Yellow, Sundays are Grey,’ retitled ‘No More Hurt,’ was a Sunday Times bestseller (UK) and included on the Guardian's Best Books of the Year list. Their books have been shortlisted for the MIND Book Award, the BC Book Prize, the VanCity Award, the Pat Lowther Award and the Ferro-Grumley Award. They are the two-time winner of Canada's CBC Canada Writes Award for fiction (2003/2014). Their work is included in The Journey Prize Anthology, Best Canadian Short Stories, Best Canadian Poetry and was a Notable in BASS and6 times a Notable in BAE. Words in Salon, NYT, Gay Mag, Seventeen, The Rumpus, The Sun, Guernica, LARB, Medium, and many others. They edit for Many Gendered Mothers. They live near Vancouver.
Jessica's Elevator, children's
Body Rain, poetry
July Nights and Other Stories, short fiction
Steam-Cleaning Love, poetry
Mondays are Yellow/No More Hurt, memoir
Going Santa Fe, poetry chapbook
Hunger, short fiction
Love Will Burst into a Thousand Shapes, poetry
Weekend, novel
Would You Like Some Gramma On That?, fiction chapbook
Jessica's Elevator, children's
Body Rain, poetry
July Nights and Other Stories, short fiction
Steam-Cleaning Love, poetry
Mondays are Yellow/No More Hurt, memoir
Going Santa Fe, poetry chapbook
Hunger, short fiction
Love Will Burst into a Thousand Shapes, poetry
Weekend, novel
Would You Like Some Gramma On That?, fiction chapbook
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
October 16, 2018
Oof. You know when a book is too real? This novel is a snapshot of 2 queer couples spending the weekend in side by side cabins in rural Ontario. It's highly character and relationship driven, with a lot of authentic dyke processing, gender feels, very authentic (kinky) sex, and interrogation of disability. It took me a while to get the characters but after about half way through I was invested. Very thought-provoking! But also kinda depressing? Full review on my blog!
July 5, 2022
Modern romance! Exactly like something you may have read before, but also completely different. What Hamilton has done here is take a type of relationship story we have all experienced and somehow re-invent it, so that we see it anew. It's not just queer, it's more than that — we see all the familiar elements as if for the first time.
The island setting feels a little forced —everyone jammed into the pressure cooker— but we have all been on those weekends and boy are we glad when they are finally over even if that means going back to the hectic chaos of the city. The pressure cooker brings everything to a boil.
When the characters return to their urban lives, the story opens up into the world. Weekends are more than interludes; they define us, both by their absence and presence.
Funny, fierce, tender, and revelatory.
The island setting feels a little forced —everyone jammed into the pressure cooker— but we have all been on those weekends and boy are we glad when they are finally over even if that means going back to the hectic chaos of the city. The pressure cooker brings everything to a boil.
When the characters return to their urban lives, the story opens up into the world. Weekends are more than interludes; they define us, both by their absence and presence.
Funny, fierce, tender, and revelatory.
March 19, 2016
Jane Eaton Hamilton’s Weekend is a queer, crip reimagining of “What we talk about when we talk about love.” Two couples, one new and one together sixteen years, come together for a weekend in the country, unexpectedly confronting the demons of their current and past relationships. As one couple unravels under the stress of a newborn, the other wrestles with what it means to love and be loved in the face of a deadly disability.
Weekend is sexy, tender, and raw, with smoldering sex scenes and intimate arguments that leave tender bruises at the intersections of disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, and class. Jane Eaton Hamilton exposes the exquisite and raw vulnerabilities of her characters with empathy and insight—the lesbian who secretly thinks she might be straight, the new mother anxious for her milk to come in, the “heart crip” domestic abuse survivor whose A-fib looms like a death threat, the maybe-trans boi who is terrified of losing the love their life.
“Do you know what we talk about when we talk about love?” One of the women asks. Is love the sum total of things “we can tolerate”—“the vast list of things we give up for companionship?” Is love lust? Is it sacrifice? Perhaps no definition of love can account for the nostalgia one character feels about a lying, manipulative ex, or for taking a leap of fate in spite of impending death. Perhaps there isn’t even such a thing as a “queer” or “crip” version of Carver’s iconic story, because in the end, love all comes down to the same violence, the same loss, the same sacrifice, the same leaps of faith. And yet, it’s not the same, not at all, and that’s the beauty of Weekend, how it illuminates those universal themes but changes them, too, revealing how life on the fringes makes “what we talk about when we talk about love” a riskier and more terrifying proposition.
Weekend is sexy, tender, and raw, with smoldering sex scenes and intimate arguments that leave tender bruises at the intersections of disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, and class. Jane Eaton Hamilton exposes the exquisite and raw vulnerabilities of her characters with empathy and insight—the lesbian who secretly thinks she might be straight, the new mother anxious for her milk to come in, the “heart crip” domestic abuse survivor whose A-fib looms like a death threat, the maybe-trans boi who is terrified of losing the love their life.
“Do you know what we talk about when we talk about love?” One of the women asks. Is love the sum total of things “we can tolerate”—“the vast list of things we give up for companionship?” Is love lust? Is it sacrifice? Perhaps no definition of love can account for the nostalgia one character feels about a lying, manipulative ex, or for taking a leap of fate in spite of impending death. Perhaps there isn’t even such a thing as a “queer” or “crip” version of Carver’s iconic story, because in the end, love all comes down to the same violence, the same loss, the same sacrifice, the same leaps of faith. And yet, it’s not the same, not at all, and that’s the beauty of Weekend, how it illuminates those universal themes but changes them, too, revealing how life on the fringes makes “what we talk about when we talk about love” a riskier and more terrifying proposition.
April 18, 2025
I really enjoyed this! It was well written and I felt fully invested in all the characters. It was really quite sad at times, but a good sad. All round quite interesting dynamics and insights into relationships, marriage and motherhood. I felt one couples’ story wasn’t quite ready to be wrapped up when the book ended but other than that, it was great.
February 25, 2025
Gender studies, trans, lesbian, lgbt, queer, family life, disability, WOC, diversity, novels, fiction, cottages, N. Ontario, Muskoka, daughters, same-sex marriage, childbirth, relationship breakup, transphobic parent
Book review: Agony and ecstasy apparent in new novel Weekend
Tom Sandborn
Vancouver Sun
Weekend
By Jane Eaton Hamilton
Arsenal Pulp Press
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Tolstoy tells his readers at the beginning of Anna Karenina. Like most successful epigrams, this line is pungent, compelling and memorable. Also, like many such quips, it could work just as well turned inside out, as a declaration that all unhappy families have broad stroke elements in common.
While award-winning Vancouver poet, short story writer and novelist Jane Eaton Hamilton’s new book, Weekend is, by, the author’s own account, inspired by Raymond Carver’s grim 1981 meditation on love among the ruins “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” it can also be read as a reflection on Tolstoy’s formulation about happy and unhappy families. But however the erudite reader wants to compare it to earlier fiction, Weekend itself is a tour de force, an account of two same-sex couples in crisis, a tender meditation on the nature of love, desire, betrayal, mortality and reconciliation.
It also is notably successful in rendering the complex realities of sex, a challenge that defeats most writers who attempt it. Not many readers these days will be shocked or offended by the book’s sexual frankness, but some will wince at the way Hamilton breaks another taboo. Her enthusiastically sexual characters are in mid life (one is turning 50 as the weekend occurs) and come to their erotic experiences with all the baggage that status implies. In a culture that disdains the old, particularly older women, as sexless, these moments of powerful erotic realism are genuinely transgressive and wonderfully done.
While I describe the main characters as same sex-couples, the reality is somewhat more complex, as one of the characters is considering a gender transition. The fact that this character prefers the de-gendered singular pronouns “they” and “their” will take a bit of getting used to for some readers, but the calm, matter of fact way in which Hamilton portrays trans issues and the new verbal etiquette they imply is one of the book’s many strengths.
Unlike the gay novels of my youth, which tended to focus univocally on the coming out narrative, this book takes all that for granted and turns its attention to what happens after one has come out, won the right to marry and moved into what the public intellectual Stan Persky calls a “post gay” reality. Often enough, Hamilton suggests, this post liberation reality, while obviously a huge improvement on the fever swamps of homophobia and oppression that preceded it, is full of ordinary human heartbreak and betrayal, sorrow, tedium and flawed, triumphant love.
That recognition, and the lapidary prose Hamilton uses to embody and dramatize it make Weekend a remarkable, intricate and mature work of art. And Hamilton can reflect on these matters from the perspective of one of liberation’s veteran warriors. According to the University of Toronto’s Poetry Online, Hamilton “came out in 1982. She was a litigant in Canada’s same-sex marriage case from 2000-2003, and then maintained an website called queermarriage for the next several years to aid couples coming to B.C. from other countries with queer-friendly resources.”
Most of the novel’s action takes place over a weekend at two lake island homes in Ontario cottage country, giving the book a tight temporal and geographic focus, almost Aristotelian in its unity, a unity that is only partly diffused by the book’s coda, which takes the four lovers past the weekend, back to the city and on into new domestic and medical complications.
The couples are Elliot and Joe, two women who are celebrating the recent birth of their daughter Scout, and Ajax and Logan, who have come to the lake for Logan to propose marriage to Ajax. In the course of the weekend the couples are both disrupted, one by abandonment, one by a health crisis.
While in summary this may sound like the stuff of queer soap opera, in Hamilton’s deft, spare treatment, there is no melodrama. Sex is portrayed in a compelling, original fashion, and the trials and rigours of dealing with a new baby are portrayed with sensual detail and emotional depth. Hamilton’s rendering of her character’s heart crisis and of the years of impaired functioning, pain and body shame that preceded it benefits from the same sensual precision and closely observed detail that illuminate her sex scenes. All her characters are nuanced, complex and believable creations. This is the real world of imperfect adults, captured and rendered with compassion, wit and intelligence.
Much of this is accomplished by Hamilton’s exemplary use of free indirect discourse, that challenging but supple device that allows a third person account to reflect the first person inner life of the character. This approach, pioneered by Jane Austen, is a powerful one, allowing layers of double perspective and irony to be rendered in careful, minimalist fashion.
This is a remarkable book. Little wonder that Hamilton has been recognized so often for her narrative skills- by the Guardian’s Best Book of the Year List, the BC Book Prizes, the VanCity Award, CBC Literary Awards and many other prizes. If you have not yet discovered this important Canadian voice, Weekend is your opportunity.
Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. He welcomes your feedback and story tips at tos65@telus.net.
Book review: Agony and ecstasy apparent in new novel Weekend
Tom Sandborn
Vancouver Sun
Weekend
By Jane Eaton Hamilton
Arsenal Pulp Press
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Tolstoy tells his readers at the beginning of Anna Karenina. Like most successful epigrams, this line is pungent, compelling and memorable. Also, like many such quips, it could work just as well turned inside out, as a declaration that all unhappy families have broad stroke elements in common.
While award-winning Vancouver poet, short story writer and novelist Jane Eaton Hamilton’s new book, Weekend is, by, the author’s own account, inspired by Raymond Carver’s grim 1981 meditation on love among the ruins “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” it can also be read as a reflection on Tolstoy’s formulation about happy and unhappy families. But however the erudite reader wants to compare it to earlier fiction, Weekend itself is a tour de force, an account of two same-sex couples in crisis, a tender meditation on the nature of love, desire, betrayal, mortality and reconciliation.
It also is notably successful in rendering the complex realities of sex, a challenge that defeats most writers who attempt it. Not many readers these days will be shocked or offended by the book’s sexual frankness, but some will wince at the way Hamilton breaks another taboo. Her enthusiastically sexual characters are in mid life (one is turning 50 as the weekend occurs) and come to their erotic experiences with all the baggage that status implies. In a culture that disdains the old, particularly older women, as sexless, these moments of powerful erotic realism are genuinely transgressive and wonderfully done.
While I describe the main characters as same sex-couples, the reality is somewhat more complex, as one of the characters is considering a gender transition. The fact that this character prefers the de-gendered singular pronouns “they” and “their” will take a bit of getting used to for some readers, but the calm, matter of fact way in which Hamilton portrays trans issues and the new verbal etiquette they imply is one of the book’s many strengths.
Unlike the gay novels of my youth, which tended to focus univocally on the coming out narrative, this book takes all that for granted and turns its attention to what happens after one has come out, won the right to marry and moved into what the public intellectual Stan Persky calls a “post gay” reality. Often enough, Hamilton suggests, this post liberation reality, while obviously a huge improvement on the fever swamps of homophobia and oppression that preceded it, is full of ordinary human heartbreak and betrayal, sorrow, tedium and flawed, triumphant love.
That recognition, and the lapidary prose Hamilton uses to embody and dramatize it make Weekend a remarkable, intricate and mature work of art. And Hamilton can reflect on these matters from the perspective of one of liberation’s veteran warriors. According to the University of Toronto’s Poetry Online, Hamilton “came out in 1982. She was a litigant in Canada’s same-sex marriage case from 2000-2003, and then maintained an website called queermarriage for the next several years to aid couples coming to B.C. from other countries with queer-friendly resources.”
Most of the novel’s action takes place over a weekend at two lake island homes in Ontario cottage country, giving the book a tight temporal and geographic focus, almost Aristotelian in its unity, a unity that is only partly diffused by the book’s coda, which takes the four lovers past the weekend, back to the city and on into new domestic and medical complications.
The couples are Elliot and Joe, two women who are celebrating the recent birth of their daughter Scout, and Ajax and Logan, who have come to the lake for Logan to propose marriage to Ajax. In the course of the weekend the couples are both disrupted, one by abandonment, one by a health crisis.
While in summary this may sound like the stuff of queer soap opera, in Hamilton’s deft, spare treatment, there is no melodrama. Sex is portrayed in a compelling, original fashion, and the trials and rigours of dealing with a new baby are portrayed with sensual detail and emotional depth. Hamilton’s rendering of her character’s heart crisis and of the years of impaired functioning, pain and body shame that preceded it benefits from the same sensual precision and closely observed detail that illuminate her sex scenes. All her characters are nuanced, complex and believable creations. This is the real world of imperfect adults, captured and rendered with compassion, wit and intelligence.
Much of this is accomplished by Hamilton’s exemplary use of free indirect discourse, that challenging but supple device that allows a third person account to reflect the first person inner life of the character. This approach, pioneered by Jane Austen, is a powerful one, allowing layers of double perspective and irony to be rendered in careful, minimalist fashion.
This is a remarkable book. Little wonder that Hamilton has been recognized so often for her narrative skills- by the Guardian’s Best Book of the Year List, the BC Book Prizes, the VanCity Award, CBC Literary Awards and many other prizes. If you have not yet discovered this important Canadian voice, Weekend is your opportunity.
Tom Sandborn lives and writes in Vancouver. He welcomes your feedback and story tips at tos65@telus.net.
July 5, 2016
This is the best book I have read this year. Hamilton brings us four wonderful characters who live and grapple with lesbian/queer/women's contemporary experiences. The sex is hot; the characters are wonderfully flawed, human, and relatable. This is the book to beat for the 2016 Lammy in Lesbian Fiction. Buy it. Read it. Love it.
My review at Curve: http://www.curvemag.com/Reviews/Weeke...
My review at Curve: http://www.curvemag.com/Reviews/Weeke...
November 19, 2018
This was just horrible writing. The very first sentence struck me with her efforts to be overly poetic to the point of making it unclear what she was actually saying. As the story played out, the characters all had implausible actions, and the dialogue all sounded like someone was reading a textbook or giving a lecture. It didn't seem like any character in the book (or probably the author) understood how physically taxing it would be to give birth and then have to take care of a baby. You don't invite guests over for dinner when your baby is two days old! You don't drop off your dog with a mom who is alone with her newborn and expect her to watch him! Several of the characters were horrible beyond belief, and I feel like I was expected to accept this as just part of the messiness of real relationships. It was all so bad.
June 28, 2016
Just fantastic. So much *can* happen in a few days' time, and tons is packed into this book. Set in a lakeside locale that proves anything but idyllic, "Weekend" is as much an exploration of adulthood's confusions and wounds as it is a study of complex relationships. The characters, both likable and abhorrent, rip and rifle through their emotional baggage - some of it spanning several decades - to varying degrees of detriment.
What sets "Weekend" apart from the pack is Jane Eaton Hamilton's refusal to idealise relationships between women, and is perhaps the first queer-themed book I've encountered that doesn't regard queerness as holier-than-thou. We are *not* immune from abusive behaviors, malice, cruelty, or selfishness, and Hamilton's Joe, Elliot, Logan, and Ajax display motivations that stray far from the "easy" answers.
What sets "Weekend" apart from the pack is Jane Eaton Hamilton's refusal to idealise relationships between women, and is perhaps the first queer-themed book I've encountered that doesn't regard queerness as holier-than-thou. We are *not* immune from abusive behaviors, malice, cruelty, or selfishness, and Hamilton's Joe, Elliot, Logan, and Ajax display motivations that stray far from the "easy" answers.
February 11, 2017
Intense relationship story about two queer couples at neighbouring cottages on a weekend. Logan is about to propose to their partner Ajax, who has a heart-related disability. The other couple, Elliott and Joe, is facing the struggles of having a newborn baby, and one woman's disease over her partner's polyamorous lifestyle. Logan and Ajax's story was more compelling for me, probably because it felt more intense, with Ajax's heart condition, the couple's frank discussions around each one's comfort level with BDSM and role play, and both partners having family issues (Logan with a mother who insists on calling them by their birth name and asks that Logan not get married until she dies, and Ajax with grown children worried over their mother's condition and unhappy about her remarrying).
August 27, 2016
I just finished reading Weekend by Jane Eaton Hamilton. There a few reason why I didn't want to read this book as I suspected that the subject matter would take me to hard places. But when a queer/lesbian/gay story comes out, I must explore. Two story lines, both compelling, switching back and forth at just the right time.
Once I started reading this book, save for sleeping, I could not put it down.
Maybe there will be a sequel. There was definitely enough story to continue.
Once I started reading this book, save for sleeping, I could not put it down.
Maybe there will be a sequel. There was definitely enough story to continue.
July 9, 2017
Wish I had liked it more
The book seemed more concerned with issues and identities than the development of solid, three dimensional characters. Some nice descriptive passages though.
The book seemed more concerned with issues and identities than the development of solid, three dimensional characters. Some nice descriptive passages though.
March 26, 2025
A four-way axis of birth, illness, love, and separation, Eaton Hamilton’s ninth book “Weekend” is a complexly-nuanced take on defining concerns of humanity. Marketed as a romance novel, “Weekend” more than delivers on that premise, mixing highly-erotic prose and intensely beautiful dialogue with expansive, thoughtful depth. Those looking for an entertaining, dare-I-say “weekend” read will have a cool time here, while those who’d like a more reflective book will find plenty of great ideas to challenge them. Eaton Hamilton’s veteran, masterful prose is both powerfully resonant and intriguing: in my opinion, their work deserves to be read much more widely.
“Weekend” centers on four characters: Logan, Ajax, Joe, and Elliott. Logan and Ajax are a couple, as are Joe and Elliott. Ajax is due to turn 50, and so Logan decides to give her a nice, romantic weekend on an island where they used to live with Elliott, an ex-partner. Sound like a lot? It gets better; Joe has just given birth. She lives on the island with Elliott; they’re a married couple. The couple just had a baby daughter, Scout, after years of trying. Logan, Ajax, Joe, and Elliott share a complex and layered history. Enough to say, we’re not in for a nice casual weekend escape here.
Eaton Hamilton discusses a lot of really immediate issues in this book with an adroitness born of experience and wisdom. “Weekend” is a very wise book. All four main characters are queer; they’re also aging. One of them lives with a disability. Hamilton discusses fidelity, infant care, polyamory, BDSM, life, death, grieving, and escape in ways which both seem off-book and very fluid. Never once in almost 300 pages did the prose feel overdrawn, too weighted or inauthentic. Logan, Ajax, Joe, and Elliott are very different people who’re often at odds with one another. Eaton Hamilton is a very gifted, hardworking writer who in my opinion should be much better-known. Their work is an unblinking scrutiny of what it means to be authentic, who we are when thrown back upon ourselves, assumes little and misses less. People who’d like to see a shorter (and free) sample of their fiction should check out “Smiley,” winner of the 2014 CBC Short Story Prize, which EH won from a huge field of entries. Think that sounds hard? Well… they’ve won the Prize not once but twice. Their work is largely experimental, and also doesn’t shy away from the biggest questions.
“Weekend” in particular is about four people headed to very different places, the bonds which alternately intertwine and drive them apart. It’s reminiscent of writers like William Faulkner or Hanya Yanagihara, prose which leaves you, the reader, to assess and judge rather than forcing a judgment on you. I will say that “Weekend” touches on some very heavy themes. While I myself very much appreciated its take on those issues, particularly disability and queerness and BDSM, some people may have a harder time precisely because it’s well-written. “Weekend” manages in full what other, more popular novels have only done halfway, or skirt around altogether. I also found it close to unputdownable, reading most of it in one several-hour stretch, and it called to me the whole time I was away.
An incredible, brave book of great range, “Weekend” is both compassionate and uncomfortable in all the right ways: Eaton Hamilton is a great writer.
“Weekend” centers on four characters: Logan, Ajax, Joe, and Elliott. Logan and Ajax are a couple, as are Joe and Elliott. Ajax is due to turn 50, and so Logan decides to give her a nice, romantic weekend on an island where they used to live with Elliott, an ex-partner. Sound like a lot? It gets better; Joe has just given birth. She lives on the island with Elliott; they’re a married couple. The couple just had a baby daughter, Scout, after years of trying. Logan, Ajax, Joe, and Elliott share a complex and layered history. Enough to say, we’re not in for a nice casual weekend escape here.
Eaton Hamilton discusses a lot of really immediate issues in this book with an adroitness born of experience and wisdom. “Weekend” is a very wise book. All four main characters are queer; they’re also aging. One of them lives with a disability. Hamilton discusses fidelity, infant care, polyamory, BDSM, life, death, grieving, and escape in ways which both seem off-book and very fluid. Never once in almost 300 pages did the prose feel overdrawn, too weighted or inauthentic. Logan, Ajax, Joe, and Elliott are very different people who’re often at odds with one another. Eaton Hamilton is a very gifted, hardworking writer who in my opinion should be much better-known. Their work is an unblinking scrutiny of what it means to be authentic, who we are when thrown back upon ourselves, assumes little and misses less. People who’d like to see a shorter (and free) sample of their fiction should check out “Smiley,” winner of the 2014 CBC Short Story Prize, which EH won from a huge field of entries. Think that sounds hard? Well… they’ve won the Prize not once but twice. Their work is largely experimental, and also doesn’t shy away from the biggest questions.
“Weekend” in particular is about four people headed to very different places, the bonds which alternately intertwine and drive them apart. It’s reminiscent of writers like William Faulkner or Hanya Yanagihara, prose which leaves you, the reader, to assess and judge rather than forcing a judgment on you. I will say that “Weekend” touches on some very heavy themes. While I myself very much appreciated its take on those issues, particularly disability and queerness and BDSM, some people may have a harder time precisely because it’s well-written. “Weekend” manages in full what other, more popular novels have only done halfway, or skirt around altogether. I also found it close to unputdownable, reading most of it in one several-hour stretch, and it called to me the whole time I was away.
An incredible, brave book of great range, “Weekend” is both compassionate and uncomfortable in all the right ways: Eaton Hamilton is a great writer.
April 4, 2018
Weekend swept me right into its plot with characters that I had to keep reading to learn more about. Fiction isn't usually my thing, but this book in particular held my interest and the way the characters were written kept me engaged so that I couldn't stop reading.
Diving into its pages felt as natural as breathing. Several times I forgot that I was even reading because conversations and interactions were so seamless that I felt more like I was catching up with friends interacting on a weekend. It doesn't happen often and the lack of this is why I sometimes struggle with reading fiction, with my ADHD. The author crafted characters that aren't just believable but that are so real it's hard to believe they were written into existence and didn't live somewhere else in the ether. Some writers bring characters to life, but the characters helped remind me of the light in the hurts that took place in previous relationships, while reminding me of how much I enjoy fiction.
Some of the struggles the characters went through while reading felt like a gateway to better understanding myself. I also enjoyed the writing because I saw myself in it and because I'd tried to navigate a poly relationship before, with similar struggles to Joe and Elliot, while exes like Logan left imprints. There were also ways that Ajax's experience of her totally different lived experiences to Logan's had me feeling the ways I used this in my own life to protect myself from hurt. It's something special when an author brings these nuances of our humanity, vulnerability and relationship together in perfect marriage with a great writing.
I've read in a few places here that people are upset that it got caught up in identity too much but isn't that the point of a great novel whose contents help you feel seen and validated? If the struggles that go along with these identities seems unrealistic, it's important to ask whether or not you're asking the novel to be more like you for you to fully enjoy it, or whether you want to enjoy a novel as it is, for what it's saying about the human condition through voices that are just unfamiliar. As a queer person who is non-binary with a learning disability and ADHD it's nice when I see myself in CanLit especially demonstrating that it's possible to publish books with characters who go by "They" for more than just a plot device.
I read about one book per day on average, unless I'm swamped with work, but this was truly a treat for me to come home to over two days that were incredibly busy with deadlines, community meetings and working at my "day job"; Truly, an enjoyable read that I highly recommend!
Diving into its pages felt as natural as breathing. Several times I forgot that I was even reading because conversations and interactions were so seamless that I felt more like I was catching up with friends interacting on a weekend. It doesn't happen often and the lack of this is why I sometimes struggle with reading fiction, with my ADHD. The author crafted characters that aren't just believable but that are so real it's hard to believe they were written into existence and didn't live somewhere else in the ether. Some writers bring characters to life, but the characters helped remind me of the light in the hurts that took place in previous relationships, while reminding me of how much I enjoy fiction.
Some of the struggles the characters went through while reading felt like a gateway to better understanding myself. I also enjoyed the writing because I saw myself in it and because I'd tried to navigate a poly relationship before, with similar struggles to Joe and Elliot, while exes like Logan left imprints. There were also ways that Ajax's experience of her totally different lived experiences to Logan's had me feeling the ways I used this in my own life to protect myself from hurt. It's something special when an author brings these nuances of our humanity, vulnerability and relationship together in perfect marriage with a great writing.
I've read in a few places here that people are upset that it got caught up in identity too much but isn't that the point of a great novel whose contents help you feel seen and validated? If the struggles that go along with these identities seems unrealistic, it's important to ask whether or not you're asking the novel to be more like you for you to fully enjoy it, or whether you want to enjoy a novel as it is, for what it's saying about the human condition through voices that are just unfamiliar. As a queer person who is non-binary with a learning disability and ADHD it's nice when I see myself in CanLit especially demonstrating that it's possible to publish books with characters who go by "They" for more than just a plot device.
I read about one book per day on average, unless I'm swamped with work, but this was truly a treat for me to come home to over two days that were incredibly busy with deadlines, community meetings and working at my "day job"; Truly, an enjoyable read that I highly recommend!
June 30, 2021
hannah was right
September 29, 2018
Brutal, and #2real. A complicated snap shot of the intricacies of queer love.
March 30, 2018
Jane Eaton Hamilton's novel "Weekend" takes the reader on a getaway in more ways than one. The novel situates its four main characters, two lesbian/queer couples, on an island in Ontario cottage country, a place where we witness the dynamics of their relationships unfold under a magnifying glass, without the distractions of city life. I was impressed by the fluidity of the prose, and Eaton Hamilton's ability to reveal so much about her characters through their small actions as much as dialogue. The author's refreshingly honest, unsentimental descriptions of women's bodies and raw, postpartum emotional states, in particular, bring the experience of new motherhood to life. There is so much sensual deliciousness in this book: so many sexy, dreamy, languid, goofy, languid, and erotic moments, to counterbalance the more serious themes of marital conflict, disability, disparities in wealth and class, and how queerness defines/shapes the lives/relationships of its characters.
The novel was a bit of a slow burn for me, but about a third of the way in, I was not only hooked, but felt emotionally invested in the lives of Logan, Ajax, Joe and Elliot. Equally impressive was the inclusion of diverse, multifaceted queer, female/non-binary characters (one of whom uses "they/them" pronouns, something I have never seen in fiction before), as well as broader issues of gender, race and class to contextualize the characters' relationships. It is hard to address these subjects and do them justice, so Eaton Hamilton is to be commended for tackling them with ferocious verve. The last third of the novel was for me by far its most devastating and poignant. I was, in turns, gutted and elated, and deeply gratified by the time I reached the end: so much warmth, humour, and so many moments of genuine human connection along the way. I would recommend this novel for LGBT/non-LGBT readers alike. You might just finish it over the course of a weekend.
The novel was a bit of a slow burn for me, but about a third of the way in, I was not only hooked, but felt emotionally invested in the lives of Logan, Ajax, Joe and Elliot. Equally impressive was the inclusion of diverse, multifaceted queer, female/non-binary characters (one of whom uses "they/them" pronouns, something I have never seen in fiction before), as well as broader issues of gender, race and class to contextualize the characters' relationships. It is hard to address these subjects and do them justice, so Eaton Hamilton is to be commended for tackling them with ferocious verve. The last third of the novel was for me by far its most devastating and poignant. I was, in turns, gutted and elated, and deeply gratified by the time I reached the end: so much warmth, humour, and so many moments of genuine human connection along the way. I would recommend this novel for LGBT/non-LGBT readers alike. You might just finish it over the course of a weekend.
August 10, 2017
On one hand, I love that this story is about queer people written by a queer person. It's not gay or lesbian, it's queer. There is enough to this novel just with the complex gender of characters and lifestyles to be worth reading. Also, raises some good story lines involving queer people having children. However, the characters and story weren't very well developed, and frankly I felt like the bdsm scenes read like vanity, and weren't that impressive.
April 25, 2021
This book is so incredibly queer. It's butch. It's femme. It's trans. It's genderqueer. It's poly. It's kink. It's all the things. There's even a character named Ajax and a dog running around in the background. It's not even all white! It's a unicorn of a novel.
Two queer couples in very different stages of their relationships (one new and passionate, the other long-term with a baby) spend the weekend together at the summer home of my fucking dreams.
The characters talk a lot, about everything. They listen but they don't always hear exactly what the other person meant so it feels like real life. These characters have lived and they feel lived in. It's not perfect and it takes a little while to hit its stride, but I'm so happy this novel exists.
Two queer couples in very different stages of their relationships (one new and passionate, the other long-term with a baby) spend the weekend together at the summer home of my fucking dreams.
The characters talk a lot, about everything. They listen but they don't always hear exactly what the other person meant so it feels like real life. These characters have lived and they feel lived in. It's not perfect and it takes a little while to hit its stride, but I'm so happy this novel exists.
August 10, 2017
Loved the writing but hated the characters and their decisions? Tough to read a book when you feel like this. Most of the decisions were believable except for Ajax. Her health concerns demanded better.
But, quick read.
But, quick read.
December 8, 2018
I’m not a fan of this book. I thought it’s characters were really flat, the dialogue was unnatural and the story pacing was really off. It was cool to see a genderqueer character written well, but that for me was the only solid part.
February 13, 2021
Definitely not my typical book choice but I know Jane and wanted to support an author with a real talent. Intricate story line and much to digest.
June 28, 2023
One of my friends described this book as a more intolerable version of The L Word, which is spot on. The characters are awful, the writing is a bit excessive at times, and I feel like I wouldn’t have finished it if it weren’t a bookclub book. Unless you enjoy getting viscerally angry and uncomfy while you’re reading a book and shutting it thinking “I will never read this again, but it was just okay”, I’d steer clear.
April 9, 2018
Weekend breaks new ground in queer writing. It ventures into terrain that I haven't yet read in terms of the often overlooked, or too often hidden moments of queer relationships. I zoomed through it in a single weekend due to it's compelling characters and well constructed conflicts. Highly recommend.
August 14, 2021
This book is the epitome of disastrous-queer-relationship trauma porn. The characters are situated on a spectrum with stereotypically evil on one end and completely-disrespected-by-the-author on the other end. It’s harsh and disappointing that these are the queer stories we so often get. Even if this were about straight people it would have been hard to read :(
November 1, 2017
totally what 2 stars says. It was ok. I don't regret reading and it had some interesting things but the characters and their actions were completely unbelievable. I like a little more reality in my fiction!
February 24, 2022
The argument dialogue was so perfect, seemed like the transcripts from a thousand arguments of long-term toxic couples. I liked the dual perspective, made me think that sometimes people can correct their treatment of others and some people just won't. Sad and frustrating, but hopeful.
August 14, 2018
Jane Hamilton is a wonderful, observant, deeply felt writer with characters that feel alive.
August 22, 2019
I loved this book! Super raw and real. I loved the way the author used language to describe such visceral and difficult to describe feelings and experiences.
October 1, 2019
Biphobic bullshit.
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