Aaron Hamburger

Ari, struggling with his marriage and his sense of self, is blindsided by memories the day his husband comes across his high school yearbook and asks about a message written by a boy named Justin.

In 1992 a truly traumatic incident (accident?) happened to Ari which caused him to change schools to Dalton, an upscale, private, only recently Jewish-friendly high school in the upper-class suburbs of Detroit. At Dalton, Ari met Justin. Ari’s life was completely changed the day Justin dragged Ari show more into an empty classroom and played Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for him on the tape deck.

With a flashback/modern day ratio of about 85/15, Nirvana is Here grapples with issues of personal identity, sexuality, race, sexual assault, class, religion, and all the discomforts and stresses of coming of age. I am not exaggerating when I say this book is jam packed with struggle and angst. That may be the book’s only downfall – in attempting to tackle so much, it sometimes feels like some of these ideas aren’t fleshed out enough to add to the story with any real depth or meaning.

Nirvana is Here is a heart-wrenching story of falling head-first into first love while still dealing with the emotional fallout of a brutal assault. It was almost impossible for me to put this book down, which is rare for me these days. I was fully invested in the history of Ari and Justin and felt the emotional rollercoaster of their relationship on a truly visceral level.

While some of the subject matter may be too intense and triggering for some readers, I think Nirvana is Here is a beautiful, but sad, coming-of-age story that is a heartily welcome addition to the LGBTQ literature pantheon.

I was provided an uncorrected Advanced Reader Copy of this book, releasing in May 2019, by the publisher, Three Rooms Press. show less

Wednesday, April 6th, 1994, I awoke in my London hotel room to find a note had been pushed under the door. "I won't be joining today's activities. My favorite singer just died and I can't cope." That was how I learned of Kurt Cobain's suicide. I was not a follower of Nirvana. Frankly I was too old, too square, too far removed from the modern music scene. I tell you this because I was quite a ways into Aaron Hamburger's newest novel before I realized that the title referred not to a spiritual show more state but rather to the quintessential grunge band. It speaks highly of Hamburger's writing skills that even though I have not faced the trauma his main character experienced, and cannot say that "Alternative" music speaks to me, I could relate deeply to Ari. From the beginning of the book, I felt I knew Ari personally; that he was telling my own story. Hamburger employs an interesting technique in recounting Ari's life. The book is divided between the 41-year-old Medieval History professor and the traumatized high school student struggling with his own sexual identity. Those sections of the "current" story are told in the third person, as if we are looking in at the adult Ari, while the teen-aged Ari tells his story in the first person. The catch phrase for the book comes almost at the end, although the theme has been lurking there since page 1. The adult Ari, considering his life, thinks "Life's an inherently dangerous business ... . These days, it seems like the art of survival depends on keeping one's mouth muzzled." (p. 369) As for me, I'm glad that Hamburger unmuzzled Ari. I want to know more of his adult life, where things go beyond the end of the book. And I want to read more, much more, of Aaron Hamburger. The book is scheduled to be released in May 2019. I received my "Advance Reader Copy" through LibraryThing's Early Reviewer Program and I'm happy to recommend the book and its author highly. show less

I’ve read a fair number of gay coming-of-age novels, both YA and adult, and I would say that Nirvana is Here holds up. I find a lot of YA titles to be flippant in their handling of the subject matter explored and some adult books to be disheartening in a way that's off-putting. NIH does neither, falling somewhere in the middle in tone.

Each chapter starts off in the present time with Ari as an adult, leading up to him meeting with Justin, an old friend from high school who he was briefly show more involved with romantically/sexually. These sections make up a small portion of the book, less than 1/7 in total. The rest of it is a reflection on the past--what led Ari to transfer to a different high school, and how his friendship with Justin developed over the years.

In retrospect, I should have known that nothing would come of Ari meeting up with Justin 20 years later. He's a good guy and you know right off that Justin is married. But I guess I was hoping for something? They just casually meet up in the second-to-last section and promise to get together as friends at some point.

It's disappointing because I was starting to get attached to high school-aged Justin and I was looking forward to what I thought would slowly become a novel about Ari and Justin. Especially because Justin was going through self identity issues regarding his sexuality more severely than Ari. To find out in the future that he passes as straight (this being Ari's point of view--he briefly speculates that Justin's wife doesn’t know that her husband is capable of being attracted to men) isn't exactly what I was looking forward to. I get that that's just the way life is sometimes; people change in ways you can’t predict or do anything about. Nirvana is Here remains Ari’s story, and Justin remains a minor character in that story.

Another large part of NIH deals with sexual assault; the rapists in this book don't understand the gravity of what they've done and seemingly don't care. The most memorable sentence in this book for me was Ari describing the unfairness of his rapist being able to move on with his life, become a person others would respect, while Ari would never be able to forget what was done to him. He calls himself an "abomination," and this part, more than any other, drove home the point that sexual assault is unforgivable. show less

Captivating...
A stunning replica of many people's lives Hamburger takes us on a journey through the eyes of Ari, our main character who tells us of his teen years long ago. Ari, now in his 40s, looks back on his teen years with joy and remorse, happiness and sorrow.
This is a very heartwarming coming-of-age novel that tugs on your heartstrings. Ari is a wonderful character and as we see the world through his eyes we find out that things aren't so cut-and-dry in our world. As many other show more victims of sexual assault will agree with me, this book was a little difficult but genuinely a good read.
The one thing that I really liked about this book was the flashbacks back to the 1990s and all of the references to movies and music and things of the time. It really made me look back on my childhood with nostalgia. And how the author was able to interweave the main storyline with that of the tragedy of Kurt Cobain was pretty ingenious.
Another thing I would like to add if I may be so candid, is that this was my very first LGBTQ book. I'm very proud to say that it was my first.
I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in a coming of age with a lot of nostalgia 😉 show less