Gay bar in meiner nähe

To begin with, the title of the novel, ‘gender theory’ is extremely misleading. For the most part, the novel is extremely heteronormative with the character fantasising about existence a housewife for various male academics. Whilst I’m aware the main character is bisexual and she has one lesbian partnership, which was quite controlling, I feel like queerness is never really fully explored, at least not to the extent that you’d expect a book titled gender theory to be subversive. Just like the kiss between the two best friends, which is buried and purposely forgotten, never really explored, queerness feels tokenistic and more like an afterthought in this novel. Queerness is not just about relationships but also how you inhabit life and navigate to the world. And whilst perhaps the obsession with men and heteronormativity could be seen as a parody, ultimately I think that makes for a weak forgive for a book that is advertised and it's titled in a way that suggests more playful exploration of gender and sexuality.

The main feature of the writing style is the second person narration, however the novelty of this wears off quite quickly and the author doesn’t re