Best Gift Books for 2020 | Holiday Gift Guide PASSPORT

LITERATURE IN ELF-SIZED PORTIONS
Gay short stories for long winter nights
If We Were Electric (University of Georgia Press. $19.95. www.patrickearlryan.com). Give a gift for each of the 12 days of Christmas with the dozen stories in Patrick Ryan’s dazzling debut collection, winner of the prestigious Flannery O’Connor award for short fiction, judged this past year by Roxanne Gay.
A native New Orleanian who currently lives in San Francisco, Ryan, who is in his forties, combines the insight of a seasoned writer with the crackling energy of a literary wunderkind. Every one of these Louisiana-set tales is densely populated and richly detailed. They almost burst at the seams, as if each story had the potential to grow into a novel. The result is work that practically rustles off the page, with even minor characters offering major memorability. The book’s first story, “Before Las Blancas,” is a near-cinematic marvel, featuring a thirteen year old gay boy who runs away from home with a 28-year-old colleague of his mother’s, all the while pining for one classmate who has accidentally killed another. These dangerous, heartwrenching stories will grab you like kudzu and suck you in like a swamp.

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I Know You Know Who I Am (Penguin. $16. www.peterkispert.com). In his debut story collection, Peter Kispert, still in his 20s, exhibits a cool, sharp style and a finely attuned ear for spare-but-telling dialogue. The book is reminiscent of early ‘80s David Leavitt, but it arrives at a time when stories about middle-class gay men muddling their way through early adulthood are far less novel in mainstream literature. The ensuing decades have mercifully made such characters’ coming out experiences far less powerful storytelling fodder. But Kispert, who smartly avoids such oft-told tales, seizes on one of their underlying elements: Virtually everyone who eventually comes out as gay (and hopefully grows comfortable being so), has spent a portion of his life in reflexive duplicity, defensively projecting an untrue story about himself. In his collection’s best pieces, Kispert gives us characters who have become particularly adept at lying and compulsively continue to do so long after it serves them well. There’s the self-proclaimed champion diver who’s actually afraid of the water; the guy who pretends to be Christian in order to keep an observant beau interested; and the fellow who falsely claims to be a hunter, then queasily kills a deer to save face. Might there be a flash of your own reflection in these stories’ glimmer and sting?

GREAT ESCAPES
Inspiration for future journeys
Fifteen Icelandic Swimming Pools (Elska. $12. www.elskamagazine.com). Since 2015, writer/photographer Liam Campbell has created and published Elska, a beautiful, body-positive magazine, each issue of which features intimate, expressive photo essays about gay men from a different city in the world. From Kuala Lumpur, to Warsaw, to Lyon, to Pittsburgh, Campbell avoids gay clichés, in both his choice of locales and style of portraiture (which isn’t to say there’s a shortage of nudes). In his delightfully straightforward first book, Campbell shares a solo trip to his own favorite travel destination, Iceland, where he revels in the country’s avid national pastime of gathering at public pools and hot tubs. There’s an affable eroticism to Campbell’s diary-like chapters, but his voice and images are refreshingly lacking in the luric and are utterly engaging. Campbell indirectly suggests that he may have Asperger’s syndrome or a related spectrum disorder, referring to a pressing need to quell the build-up of anxiety and his “special brain”. His clear-eyed perspective is special indeed and his book provides a lovely philosophical framework for anyone seeking a restorative, low-key vacation.

Inside Marrakech: Enchanting Homes and Gardens (Rizzoli. $60. www.rizzoliusa.com). Want a sneaky, subversive and utterly tasteful gift for your conservative relatives? Sway them gently toward sanity with hotelier Meryanne Loum-Martin and photographer Jean Cazal’s sumptuous coffee table celebration of architecture, textiles, and decor as showcased by the fancypants likes of Yves St. Laurent, Jasper Conran and Brice Marden, and the Bulgari family. Seems none of these folks have had a problem making homes for themselves and supporting local artisans and historical preservationists in the cultural center of a country that’s 99% Muslim. What a puckishly elegant way to point out the gorgeous influences of Islamic culture on the world.

Fire On The Island (Arcade Crimewise. $24.99. www.timothyjaysmith.com). Timothy Jay Smith, who last year gave us a complex and credible queer C.I.A. agent in the hardedged espionage thriller The Fourth Courier, shifts federal agency and overall tone in a charming page-turner featuring gay FBI agent Nick Damigos, who solves mysteries while wooing a hunky young bar-tender in a Greek island village. Smith deftly folds earnest insights about Greece’s current economic and refugee crises into the novel’s plot without weighing down its atmospheric and romantic pleasures. Lusty barmaids, a randy goat of a priest, a jack-of-all-trades mayor, and a ragtag fleet of sardine fishermen are among a cast of characters who evoke Mamma Mia more than John LeCarré, which is just fine! This is an engaging picture postcard of a read, a fizzy much-needed tonic.