This is Michael Maxwell with the Sioux City Public Library and you’re listening to Check It Out.
Today, I am recommending All the World Beside a Colonial-era historical fiction novel by Garrard Conley, the author of Boy Erased.
Maybe I’m in the minority here, but I actually really enjoyed reading The Scarlet Letter in high school! I loved how gossipy the world of that story is, and so when I saw that All the World Beside is also set in the secretive, high-stakes world of Puritan New England I knew it would have a plot driven by the complex web of that era’s social dynamics.
All the World Beside is thematically similar to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s work, but Conley takes these themes a step further in ways that will appeal to modern readers. Conley gives us closeted gay Puritans and Puritan women who want to preach, and readers follow these social tensions as they play out in a way that feels refreshingly modern and balanced. In a world full of “reimagined” or “rebooted” classics, it was enjoyable to read something so clearly inspired by the canon but that is building on it and expanding it rather than reinventing it. Reading this book feels like filling in the blanks we’ve been missing. This is the kind of story I am more used to seeing from Ryan Murphy-produced television than in literature.
It's clear Conley loves these characters, and he gives them all the space they need to be imperfect. I was touched by the ways in which the novel demonstrates the tragedies of misunderstanding and repression. Characters who at first seem adversarial are given motivations that readers can understand and sympathize with even if they don’t agree with the actions taken.
Check out All the World Beside by Garrard Conley at the Sioux City Public Library today!
Support for Check It Out on Siouxland Public Media comes from Avery Brothers.