Chuck Tingle – Bury Your Gays – Book Review

Elsewhere, we have what I’m coming to think of as the trademark Tingle style; effortless character work and world-building, a ruthlessly efficient and immediate pulp prose style that belies an impressive depth of storytelling in terms of concepts and themes, and a damn near visionary ability to speak directly to bleeding edge concerns of the cultural moment.

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle – Book Review

My previous familiarity with Dr. Tingles work is limited to his horror novella Straight (although after this, I am absolutely bumping Camp Damascus up my TBR pile). I thought that was a superb story – thought-provoking, provocative, and true to the spirit of Splatterpunk while also being deeply empathic and compassionate. And I was very curious to see how he’d fare on the broader canvas of a novel-length work.

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle did not disappoint.

The novel stars Misha, a gay screenplay writer whose TV show Travelers is a big hit for the ‘Harold Brothers studio’ (a thinly veiled Warner Bros, complete with cartoon Chucky the Woodchuck mascot). Told in first person present tense, with occasional flashbacks, Dr Tingle takes us behind the curtain into the world of hit TV writing and the associated pressures with such verisimilitude that I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t a known TV writer under the pink mask (though, aside, and to be clear; I don’t want to know unless he’s comfortable sharing – Dr. Tingle presents as he’s comfortable presenting, and I honour that).

From this point, Dr Tingle weaves a dense, fast-paced narrative that takes in the tensions and pressures associated with being a marginalised voice in a ‘mainstream’ industry, algorithmic and/or ‘committee’ driven storytelling and narrative drive, the looming threat of AI that’s fed by an ‘everything online’ culture, and the insatiable gaping bloody maw of late-stage capitalism consumption.

No, really. 

It’s also a rip-roaring splatterpunk horror novel, with genuinely terrifying monsters, a chain of mysterious and seemingly impossible events, an incredible cast of vibrant, lovable queer characters that are all unambiguously the stars of their own stories, and one of the most satisfying, coherent finales I’ve read in recent years; an absolutely seamless welding of theme and narrative that feels immensely satisfying on both counts and borderline transcendent when taken together. I realise that might feel like hyperbole, but I mean it; I can’t remember the last time my writer and reader brains were both so satisfied by a novel’s conclusion, it’s honestly irritatingly good.

Elsewhere, we have what I’m coming to think of as the trademark Tingle style; effortless character work and world-building, a ruthlessly efficient and immediate pulp prose style that belies an impressive depth of storytelling in terms of concepts and themes, and a damn near visionary ability to speak directly to bleeding edge concerns of the cultural moment.

 I’m being even vaguer than usual on purpose; I genuinely think the blinder you go in, the more fun you’ll have with this one. And I predict that, if you like any kind of pulp horror even a little bit (and, sure, if you’re not a screaming bigot) you’ll find this novel a treasure trove of bloody joy.

Run, don’t walk. And stay tuned for my thoughts on Camp Damascus, as soon as I can grab the time to read it.

KP

4/10/24

Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle

From the USA Today bestselling author of Camp Damascus, comes a new heart-pounding story about what it takes to succeed in a world that wants you dead.

Misha is a jaded scriptwriter working in Hollywood, and he’s seen it all. All the toxic personalities and coverups, the structural obstructions to reform, even dead actors brought back to screen by CGI – and finally, maybe, the hint of change.

But having just been nominated for his first Oscar, Misha is pressured by his producers to kill off a gay character in the upcoming season finale—”for the algorithm”—on the same day he witnesses to gruesome death-by-piano of treasured animator (and notorious creep) Raymond Nelson.

Success, it seems, isn’t the answer to everything.

With the help of his best friend and paranoid database queen, Tara, and his boyfriend, Zeke, Misha has face down his traumatic childhood and past mistakes. But in a paranoid industry that thinks nothing of killing off talent, it’s not so simple to find a way to do what’s right.

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