Four Squares

January 1, 2024

Finger's debut, The Old Place, was a most-anticipated-title pick by several media outlets. His latest spans the 1990s to the present in NYC, where writer Artie Anderson creates a chosen family with his boyfriend. As time passes, death, loss, and injury lead him to the local center for queer seniors, where he gets help finding his way again. Prepub Alert.

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April 8, 2024
Finger’s affectionate and evocative sophomore novel (after The Old Place) alternates between two distinct periods in a writer’s life. In 1992, 30-year-old Artie Anderson meets a married man named Abe at Julius’, the Greenwich Village gay bar, and feels a mix of friction and attraction (“He may be a little prickly, but he makes me confident”) that turns out to be a harbinger for their fraught sexual relationship. Thirty years later, in 2022, Abe has been dead for 18 years, and his widow and pregnant daughter—whom Artie has kept in touch with—are moving to Seattle. Feeling adrift, Artie volunteers at GALS, a gay and lesbian senior center. After he has an accident and breaks his foot, he returns to GALS as a member and befriends the folks he was helping. He gets particularly chummy with Carson, a new member who offers the promise of romance and inspires Artie to write a sequel to Four Squares, the book he published about his friends when he was 30. Though the wistful digressions into Artie’s past tend to lose momentum, he makes for an endearing protagonist, one who is deeply shaped by his evolving feelings for others in his life. Admirers of Finger’s first book will love this. Agent: Kate McKean, Morhaim Literary.

April 15, 2024
An older gay writer in New York City finds a way forward, despite many losses. Finger's sophomore effort tracks Artie Anderson on two interwoven timelines. One begins in the 1990s, when he's about to quit his soul-sucking job as an advertising copywriter to pen a novel based on his beloved friend group, two other gay men and a lesbian, the four of whom are joined at the hip and hang out religiously at Julius', a gay bar in Greenwich Village. The other thread begins on Artie's 60th birthday in 2022, and we can't help but notice that the guest list includes none of the same people. At 60, Artie has become a successful ghostwriter but has yet to produce a follow-up to his fiction debut, which was not a financial success, though all 34 people who read it seem to have liked it quite a lot. Finger's own well-received debut, The Old Place (2022), revolved around a church picnic in small-town Texas, and his sophomore effort continues to explore the theme of appreciation for the social networks and institutions that hold people together. In this case it's GALS, a center for Gay and Lesbian Seniors, where the decimated cohort who survived AIDS can gather for movie nights, Thanksgiving dinners, and the like. After all, as this book shows us, gay Manhattan is actually just another kind of small town. Finger's depictions of the changes in the West Village, the depredations of aging, and the possibilities of romantic connection between older single people are acute, yet infused with a sweet shrug of resignation. For example, he points out that the high-end cooking utensil store that has replaced an infamous gay club known as the Rod is at least still staffed by good-looking young men. The plot relies on a couple of big reveals toward the end, one of which is very powerful and the other less so, but it's the warmth and astute observation that are the main draw anyway. A big-hearted and relatable read, especially if you're old enough to remember the 1990s.

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May 15, 2024
Writer and podcaster Finger (The Old Place, 2022) is back with another funny, heartfelt novel. Four Squares follows Artie and his closest friends in New York in alternating time lines from the 1990s and the 2020s. In his twenties, Artie moves to New York City as a young, gay writer and feels lucky to truly find his people, three best friends who make his days brighter and fill the hours with color. Meanwhile, the AIDS epidemic threatens everyone and everything around them. Looking back from 2022, Artie is in many ways stuck in vicious cycles of isolation. After so much loss, it's hard for him to put himself out there. He finally finds new energy at the local LGBTQ senior center, a place he never fully realized he might someday be. Though he's the youngest person there, Artie experiences things at the center that put all his losses into perspective. Finger's dialogue is exquisite, and his characters are unforgettable. Four Squares is a readable and cinematic tribute to queer love and friendship.

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