Review of ​The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela

​The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela is a novel about a man, Andy, who’s marriage with his husband, Marco, is in a rocky patch. Instead of joining Marco on his work trip, Andy decides to return home to care for his father and go to his 20-year high school reunion. As Andy joins the reunion party at a local bar, there are two people from his past he is not ready to see: Paul, a man who had killed a gay man, and Jeremy, Andy’s high school love. This kicks off a tensioned bout with Paul in the intervening weeks where Andy confronts him about the death in Paul’s church, and finally Paul taking Andy to the spot of the beating to confess. While the meeting with Jeremy, who already had a wife and kids, kick starts an affair that seems to pick up where they left off right before they were going to run away together. Among all of this, Andy visits his high school friend, Simone, who turns out to have Schizophrenia and is in a mental health facility. He talks with her about his older brother’s death, his affair, and politics. Eventually, months pass and Andy’s father dies, so he returns home to care for his mother and visit Simone. And while Jeremy confessed his love, Andy knows and says the better choice is Marco.
 
Varela constructed the novel in a way that felt expansive and fulsome. We got an understanding of Andy’s parents and how they raised Andy and his brother. There was a chapter that focused on Simone’s father and his medical condition which informed Simone’s moments. While also following Andy’s brother and the troubles he had in life. However, because the novel spanned so many people and relationships, there were moments that felt like they were deviating from the main themes of the novel (i.e. Andy and Marco’s infidelity and what that meant for their marriage, and Henry’s death as it reverberated through Andy’s life). And while I thought Simone’s father’s moments made sense, they felt somewhat tangential to those central ideas. Additionally, the way the novel dealt with time sometimes felt disorienting. This was the main case for the last chapter which didn’t give much ceremony from Andy’s last visit to him visiting after his father’s death. And I initially thought the reunion would have a much stronger driving force (My personal writing instinct, I think, would be to use it not just for us to meet Paul/Jeremy, but to have the events of the reunion chart out Andy’s return in a more chronological way). Though, I felt it gave an amazing portrait of how queer folks deal with small towns, how the death of a brother influences and complicates life, and where family fits inside all of it.
 
Final Rating: 4/5