Epsiode 6.5: ‘Summer Sons’ by Lee Mandelo
‘Summer Sons’ by Lee Mandelo is taking us to Vanderbilt and we are so excited about this one!
This sounds like everything that we love in a novel and we’re really looking forward to seeing how it measures up against our examinations.
Lee Mandelo's debut Summer Sons is a sweltering, queer Southern Gothic that crosses Appalachian street racing with academic intrigue, all haunted by a hungry ghost.
Andrew and Eddie did everything together, best friends bonded more deeply than brothers, until Eddie left Andrew behind to start his graduate program at Vanderbilt. Six months later, only days before Andrew was to join him in Nashville, Eddie dies of an apparent suicide. He leaves Andrew a horrible inheritance: a roommate he doesn’t know, friends he never asked for, and a gruesome phantom that hungers for him.
As Andrew searches for the truth of Eddie’s death, he uncovers the lies and secrets left behind by the person he trusted most, discovering a family history soaked in blood and death. Whirling between the backstabbing academic world where Eddie spent his days and the circle of hot boys, fast cars, and hard drugs that ruled Eddie’s nights, the walls Andrew has built against the world begin to crumble.
And there is something awful lurking, waiting for those walls to fall.
A queer Southern Gothic with ‘academic intrigue’? Bring. It. On.
In this episode we discuss:
When the Southern Gothic meets just…the Southern
The atmosphere and the cloying humidity of the novel
Vanderbilt and the academic possibilities
You can listen to it here:
TEXTS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
‘Summer Sons’ by Lee Mandelo
‘Ninth House’ by Leigh Bardugo
‘The Magicians’ by Lev Grossman
‘The Secret History’ by Donna Tartt
‘A Study in Drowning’ by Ava Reid
OTHER MEDIA AND POP CULTURE MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
If you fancy taking a chance on ‘Summer Sons’, we’d love it if you considered using our bookshop.org link below to purchase your copy of the book which helps us fund ‘The Dark Academicals’ and gives back to independent bookshops at no extra cost to you.
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