Meet Alejandro during the Middle Spoon book tour!

Press

Audible logo

Audible

Editors Select: September 2025

Audiobook Review by Jerry Portwood. "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 humor 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."

Book Riot logo

Book Riot

The Queer Polyamorous Lit-Fic Novel I Can't Stop Thinking About

Book Review by Susie Dumond. "What we don't talk about as much in our visions of a free love utopia, though, is polyamorous heartbreak... That's what Alejandro Varela asks in his poignant, funny, delightfully eccentric new novel Middle Spoon... Our dude is a mess. And I adore him. For all his eccentricities and insufferable quirks, I can't get enough of him... Middle Spoon playfully explores the anxieties, joys, and uncertainties of modern queer love while also confronting the difficulties of trying to be a good partner, parent, and person in today's chaotic world."

Literary Hub logo

Literary Hub

15 Novels You Need to Read This Fall

"This novel is a spiral, carrying readers down, down, down into the uncomfortable depths of heartbreak... I love Varela's style, which manages to capture a certain guy (read: hand-wringing, over-educated, PMC elder Millennial flirting with socialism) in a light more precise and endearing than certain snider peers have chosen. Our protagonist feels, lives, and thinks through his ethical dilemmas in the macro-world even as he flops around tortured in the mini-one... A very human and painfully contemporary project."

The Boston Globe logo

The Boston Globe

Boston Globe: Story behind the book

"Alejandro Varela charmed us with his 2022 debut, 'The Town of Bablyon,' which became a finalist for the National Book Award. His new novel, 'Middle Spoon' (Viking) ponders the difficulty of living through a breakup from a lover when you've already got a spouse, kids, and a seemingly perfect life. Nobody but Varela could pull off this decidedly modern examination of polyamory, family, individual neurosis, and pop culture. A multifaceted gem of a novel."

BookPage logo

BookPage

Book Review: Middle Spoon

Book Review by Thane Tierney. "Alejandro Varela's funny, perceptive literary love story poses uncomfortable and universal questions about the nature of relationships and how best to navigate them. In one of his earliest emails, the narrator ruminates: “Maybe there’s something worthwhile in unorthodox relationships and atypical family structures. Maybe the world should adapt to us and not us to it.” His nearly unshakable faith in the viability of this belief forms the beating heart of this funny, perceptive and ultimately gratifying love story. "

The Washington Post logo

The Washington Post

A fall preview for readers of all kinds

"'I wouldn't have thought it possible for me at this age and at this otherwise fruitful moment in my life to plumb a new low,' says the narrator of Varela's second novel. He is a 43-year-old living in Brooklyn with his husband and two children. It's an open marriage, and the narrator has been recently devastated by a younger lover, Ben, ending their relationship. The novel is told in a series of intimate, funny, thoughtful, occasionally unhinged letters to Ben."

Los Bookies Podcast logo

Los Bookies Podcast

How Alejandro Wants to be Remembered

In the first ever episode of "Los Bookis," AGG and Sergio Lopez sit down with Alejandro Varela, to discuss his latest book, "The People Who Report More Stress." They dig deep into his work, his job at the US Open, outings to gay bars as a young man, capitalism v. working class issues, what Alejandro would be like if he was on the apps, what we should be advocating for at all times, who he wants to play Eduardo and Gus if there was a movie adaptation, and how he wants to be remembered.

The Boston Globe logo

The Boston Globe

Book Review: National Book Award finalist Alejandro Varela renders the neurotic complexity of cosmopolitan life with humor and pathos

"The People Who Report More Stress is a smartly curated collection that gets better as it goes along, building to the epiphanies missing in the earlier stories. Varela's witty, observant prose lifts each of these stories, even if the premises are decidedly grounded in real world and contemporary concerns. There's a wisdom and lightness to Varela's work that nudges us toward the conclusion that our divisions, while there may be many, can be mended."

Latino Book Review logo

Latino Book Review

Three Questions for Alejandro Varela Regarding His Debut Novel, The Town of Babylon

"The Town of Babylon is a big-hearted, intricate, and daring debut novel that creates a fully-realized, imperfect hero who confronts our country's great failings while discovering the fragile beauty that lurks beneath the surface of human connections. There is an assuredness to Varela's writing, a quality usually observed in authors who have a dozen books to their name. Simply put, this is perfectly crafted novel from a truly talented writer."

© 2025 Alejandro Varela. All Rights Reserved.

Sign up for news and events