Sexology

The tenth child of a fantasist mother and an absent millionaire, Matty Crickholme is growing into a sexually bewildered, neurotic young man. Through the collected paraphernalia of an unconventional childhood, Alex Kovacs creates a quirky, kaleidoscopic rumination on family and how it shapes us—for better or worse.

Sexology follows the strange, wonderful, fluxional world of the Crickholmes, where nonconformism is celebrated, siblings form autonomous republics, and eccentricity reigns supreme. The Crickholme siblings youthful exploits take them on myriad paths: a hermetic psychic, a dog trainer, an ice cream purveyoress, a missing person. Between memories, factoids, letters, and old photographs, Matty investigates how their offbeat rearing made them the adults they became, and how fantasy and convention collide.

Alex Kovacs’s writings have received acclaim for their invention, wit, and astute observations of our absurd world. Sexology brings this intellectual playfulness to the story of the Crickholmes with a unique prose that evokes the complex emotional landscapes of W.G. Sebald’s novels and the sometimes-gentle, sometimes-devastating style of Susanna Clarke. The result is an entrancing, incomparable medley.