The Unnameable by Stephens Gerard Malone
Reviewed by Katie Ingram
Coming to terms with who you are is hard for any teenager, but coming to terms with who you are as a queer teenager in the 1960s, while living on a military base is harder.
The Unnameable by Stephens Gerard Malone follows Audie and Gib, two boys who live next to each other on the base who are similar in more ways than one: they both enjoy reading, both are kinder and gentler than the other boys around them, and they eventually enter into a secret relationship. The Unnameable has a bit of a slow start, but once things get moving you won’t be able to put it down, you may find yourself reading well into the night.
While we explore Audie and Gib and their time together, the overarching story focuses more on Audie. Gerard Malone expertly draws the reader into his life, feeling as if you are painting on the wall observing and ultimately relating in many ways to a kid who just wants to be who he is without judgment. He’s someone who strives not to lose himself as so many around him have.
With Gib, most of what we know is told from interactions with Audie, but that doesn’t make him underdeveloped. Through Gerard Malone’s writing, and Audie’s observations, you see a character who is struggling with being two sides of a coin, one who, even more so than Audie, wants to escape. And he almost does.
Knowing the time period of the book, and through a few subtle hints, you know there isn’t going to be a happy ending, but you keep hoping. Even as you wait for the other shoe to drop and the boys to be discovered, you keep hoping. Even after you finish that last page, you keep hoping.
About the Author
Stephens Gerard Malone is a Canadian writer who caught the literary bug early, taking refuge in big novels and TV miniseries while growing up on a military base. Honing a love of story took years and U-turns: university in Montreal, waiting tables in New Zealand, exploring subjects ranging from war-torn Europe to Victorian elephants to mid-century Halifax by night, tech writing by day. Although Malone likes to extensively research and visit the places he writes about, he has long called Nova Scotia home.
About the Reviewer
Katie Ingram is a freelance journalist and the author of Breaking Disaster: Newspaper Stories of the Halifax Explosion and The Undesirables: A History of Rockhead Prison. She’s also a part-time instructor with the University of King’s College School of Journalism, Writing and Publishing.
Book Details
Publisher : Nimbus Publishing & Vagrant Press
Publication date : April 28 2026
Language : English
Print length : 264 pages
ISBN-10 : 1774715058
ISBN-13 : 978-1774715055