Comedy and God: The Book Launch of Rachel Gold’s Synclair

by Malcolm Cooke ’21

The two big topics Professor Rachel Gold ’93 wanted to explore in their new queer coming of age novel Synclair were “comedy and God.”

Synclair tells the story of Emma Synclair (who goes by her last name) a 17-year-old girl who is “very probably lesbian but you know, you may not have that all worked out at 17,” as Gold puts it. 

Synclair’s parents are devout atheists who actively discourage her from exploring anything spiritual or religious. But when they leave the country house for the summer, she is finally able to explore her spirituality freely.

Throughout the book she encounters a variety of spiritual traditions, from Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism, to Wicca and Judaism. But she also faces some hurdles when “She runs into an old friend of hers from grade school who has grown up to be hot and also queer which complicates the spiritual search a great deal,” Gold said.

This mix of ideas is something Gold almost always explores in their novels. They all include nerd culture (in Synclair it’s culinary club) and two other main themes, one of which is usually queer while the other is not. In My Year Zero she explored mental illness and learning how to date as a young lesbian and In The Silences is about dealing with implicit racism as well as nonbinary gender identities.

And this time Gold wanted to examine the exploration of spirituality among queer teens, but also make it funny.

“Whether or not people have thought about humor and spirituality going together they will trust me that they do and take a chance on this book,” Gold said, “because I think humor and spirituality right now at this time in all our lives are a very necessary combination.”

Through the guise of humor, the book also explores much weightier topics like the ways religion is sometimes used against queerness. Gold wanted to include examples of the way in which Christinaity is used to be anti-gay, like the pain Synclair’s best friend Kinsey faces from the anti-gay sentiments of her fundamentalist preacher father. 

However, Kinsey is dating Camden, whose family is very invested in their African Episcopal Church. Through conversations with academics like Todne Thomas from the Harvard School of Divinity and books like Monica Coleman’s Making a Way Out of No Way: A Womanist Theology, Gold presents an alternative, queer-affirming theology. This care in research, which Gold extends to all of their novels, grounds their YA squarely in realism, avoiding tokenism and instead including representation that is believable, accurate, and complex.

“Instead of trying to salt and pepper shaker diverse characters into my work, I’m trying to really understand groups of people who I don’t share an experience with or only share some experience so that I can have convincing, sympathetic, realistic characters,” Gold said.

Another way Gold combines thoughtful, substantive exploration of complicated real life political and social topics with something that is fun and accessible is the young adult genre itself. To them, realist YA is a perfect middle ground between exploration of deep literary themes and lighthearted, easy-to-read prose.

“If I were writing adult literature, publishers would expect some kind of tortured 500 page book about these themes and that’s not how I write.” Gold said, “I like that I can take really deep themes and then do them in this lighthearted small frame where people of all ages are going to have the energy and time and attention to read it. They’re still going to get something incredibly thoughtful, but it’s going to be fun.”

In fact, the name Synclair is a reference to Herman Hesse’s coming of age novel Demian, which was very impactful on Gold themself as a teen. The one word title, as well as both protagonists sharing the same last name (although Synclair spells hers with a “y”) come from Demian, but Gold had also always wanted to recreate a modern queer version of the book and hopes that this novel captures some of what makes Demian special.

“In a way this is a much sillier book. Demian is very serious and beautiful and does things with gender,” Gold said, “but I hope that that sense of journey and discovery came through in this.”

If you want to hear more about Synclair, make sure to attend Gold’s book launch, which will be celebrated virtually on Wednesday, December 9th at 7pm CT, presented by Next Chapter Booksellers and co-sponsored by LGBTQ library Quatrefoil Library and the Macalester English Department. You can also drop by the English Department’s coffee house at 5pm the same day. Gold will be hanging out there for a pre-launch party, and you’ll have the chance to ask them all your burning questions. For the link to the coffee house email the Macalester English Department. To sign up for the book launch register here.