The Importance of Being Wilde at Heart

“A sweet love story that celebrates diversity of its characters and culture…everything, from Ran’s compulsory military service to the banning of books, feels authentic and heightens the stakes of the burgeoning gay romance…[and] the boys’ romance builds in a way that feels natural. An unabashed love letter to Oscar Wilde, Cole Porter, and the arts’ ability to give voice to human emotion.” —Kirkus

Linmark’s novel is definitely offbeat and wild(e)ly imaginative, inviting long thoughts about the uncertainty of love, with its wonderment and hummingbird heartbeats. Beautifully written, sad as a Wilde fairy tale, and home to highly empathic characters, the novel is a rich reading experience that would make the ineffable Oscar proud. —Booklist

“The Importance of Being Wilde at Heart is a big-hearted book that uses a beautiful mixture of prose, poetry, and haikus to tell a story that—to paraphrase the words of the book’s patron saint Oscar Wilde—always keeps love in its heart.” —Abdi Nazemian author of Like a Love Story and The Authentics
 
“A lyrical meditation on finding oneself in friendship, literature, love, and heartbreak. As surreal as it is real, as beautiful as it is painful, as playful as it is wise.” —Randy Ribay, author of Patron Saints of Nothing