Middle Spoon cover art

Middle Spoon

A Novel

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About this listen

 “Middle Spoon subverts the ordinary novel with intelligence and vulnerability. . . . Varela has made a sly, analytical opera of the heart.” —Andrew Sean Greer, author of Less and Less Is Lost

“A rollicking delight! . . . Varela asks provocative questions about the shape of family and the nature of love.” —Ada Calhoun, New York Times bestselling author of Crush

Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize · One of Today’s 50 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2025 · Named a Must-Read Book of Fall 2025 by Town & Country, W Magazine, and more

A whip-smart, blazingly funny novel about heartbreak, unconventional love, and the way society could be, from National Book Award finalist Alejandro Varela

The narrator of Middle Spoon appears to be living the dream: He has a doting husband, two precocious children, all the comforts of a quiet bourgeois life—and a sexy younger boyfriend to accompany him to farmers markets and cocktail parties. But when his boyfriend abruptly dumps him, he spirals into heartbreak for the first time and must confront a world still struggling to understand polyamorous relationships. Faced with the judgment of friends and the sting of rejection, he’s left to wonder if sharing a life with both his family and his lover could ever truly be possible.

With a big heart and just the right dose of the anxieties that define the modern era, Middle Spoon skewers the unspoken rules we still live by—from taboos around intimacy to the shortcomings of Oscar season, pop culture, and gluten-free food—offering a surprising perspective on love, loss, and reinvention. Equal parts heart-wrenching and uproariously funny, Middle Spoon is for anyone who has longed, nursed a broken heart, or grappled with love at its messiest. Editors Select Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Literature & Fiction Funny Heartfelt

Editorial Review

Breaking up is hard to do
These days, it can seem as if polyamory has caught on with surprising alacrity. But when you dig deeper, most people quickly reply: "I could never do that; I'd be too jealous!" Left unsaid is that they probably wouldn't have much sympathy for your split with a lover if you already have a happy marriage, kids, and a great life. Alejandro Varela takes on the nature of queer love and open relationships with sly humour and panache. Part epistolary email breakup novel, part social critique of liberal, bourgeois values, Middle Spoon investigates the messiness of heartbreak in all its contemporary complexity. Most enjoyably, narrator Eddie Lopez had me eye-rolling and chortling along as he descends into obsession, while skewering himself in the process. As Varela writes: We've managed to appropriate the language of oppression and liberation in "rather self-aggrandizing ways that allow for the avoidance of growth and healing." Ouch!—Jerry P., Audible Editor

All stars
Most relevant
A self indulgent diatribe - I gave up after a few hours, no real story to it

Dull and repetitive

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