Finistère

Summary

“An undiscovered LGBTQ classic” – Matt Donnelly, Variety

“A remarkable novel…almost as if two of those idealized youths in Plato’s ‘Symposium’ had for one brilliant moment come alive again in a sunlit beach near the land’s end of Europe” Gore Vidal, author of The City and the Pillar

The 1920s. When wealthy American adolescent Matthew Cameron moves to France following his parents' divorce, he struggles to assimilate to his new surroundings. But when a new tennis instructor—Michel Garnier—arrives at Matthew's boarding school, a forbidden relationship develops that will have unforeseen consequences.

Originally published in 1951, Finistère is a trailblazing LGBTQ+ novel. It locates tragedy not in the same-sex nature of the relationship between Matthew and Michel, but rather in the failure of their family, and wider society, to accept their relationship. Having sold over 350,000 copies, Fritz Peters's most successful novel kicked off the explosion of unapologetically gay literature that would be published in the next decades in the United States and Britain. However, Finistère is a meditation on more than just homosexuality and forbidden love. Through its sensitively rendered characters, Peters illuminates culture clash, class conflict, divorce, child-rearing, and the gaps in empathy that provoke life's greatest pains. 

Read by actor Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild, Milk, Bau – Artist at War), this audiobook is an engaging way to enjoy Finistere.