Waiting on a Friend

East Village, summer of 1984. Renata is a young dyke-about-town who happens to have the ability to see ghosts, which has been happening more and more frequently as her friends have started dying of what has recently been named AIDS. So, when her best friend Mark dies, she assumes she''ll see him again. There''s no way Mark wouldn''t give her a chance to say goodbye, would he? But to her disappointment - and increasingly, her concern - Mark doesn''t appear. Renata has other problems, too. There''s something strange happening in her neighbourhood: advertisements for paranormal ''exterminators'' who promise to clear out bad energy keep showing up. At first, she''s sure they''re scam artists, but it becomes clear they''re actually trapping ghosts as part of a city-wide gentrification plot to make downtown safe for Reaganites. Told with humour and pathos, Waiting on a Friend is a genre-bending retelling of Queer history that manages to be both heartbreaking and healing.

About the author

Natalie Adler is an editor at Lux magazine. She was a 2022-23 Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction. She has an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College and a PhD in comparative literature from Brown University. She is from New Jersey and lives in New York City.

Product details

• Authors: Natalie Adler
• Publisher: Riverrun
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 26.05.2026
• EAN: 9781529439069
• ISBN: 978-1-5294-3906-9
• No. of pages: 400
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; New York, New York City, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945), FICTION / Literary, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, Of specific Gay interest, FICTION / LGBTQ+ / Gay, FICTION / LGBTQ+ / General, Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary