Out East

"Glynn is such a warm, elegant, and gorgeously precise writer...Like the best coming-of-age books, "Out East" is a tender, patient how-to manual, sketching a path to self-actualization, or at least to self-acceptance."

"Glynn's memoir is perfectly evocative of long, lazy summers, taking place over a few months in Montauk and charting the blossoming of friendships, the heat of new romances, and the journeys to self-discovery."

"A moving account of the particular sort of loneliness that descends when you know you're unhappy but don't quite know why, and the boundless devotion of the chosen family who's there while you're figuring it out."

"This book perfectly captures unrequited love and longing, as John struggles with growing feelings for his fellow vacationer... this one is staying on my shelf forever."

"Sun-soaked and brimming with youth, Glynn's debut memoir chronicles a life-changing summer spent in a Montauk share house. With honesty, heart, and generosity, the memoir explores friendship, first love, and identity."

"'We were sun children chasing an eternal summer.' This boisterous chronicle of a summer in Montauk sees a group of 20-something housemates who'll grow to know, to love, and care for one another. They work hard during the week, party hard on weekends, and each will face heartthrob and heartbreak. A coming out story told with feeling and humor and above all with the razor-sharp skill of a delicate and highly gifted writer."

"Out East is full of intimacy and hope and frustration and joy, an extraordinary tale of emotional awakening and lacerating ambivalence, a confession of self-doubt that becomes self-knowledge. It beautifully charts the dynamics of a group of people in a house share, but it's also about the emergence of its narrator into an exquisite emotional honesty. It's gripping and generous, and hidden in its rollicking naivete is a good measure of authentic wisdom."

"Out East personifies summer magic. [It] refashions the epic summer tale, dosed with lyrical brawn, grace, and ingenuity. Summer or not, sharing a cool pop with John Glynn's remarkable Out East will nudge you to believe in believing once again."

"Written with the same clarity and ebullience as E.B. White's 'Once More to the Lake,' if said essay were also infused with equal parts vodka, millennial angst, and sexual longing."

"No author has captured a millennial milieu better or with more empathy than John Glynn. Out East is a perfectly paced memoir and riveting portrait of a friend group. I loved it."

"John Glynn wonderfully captures it all: the bars, the clothes, the music, the breakups, the giddiness and terror of being young in New York, searching for yourself all week, searching for someone else on weekends, in one of the world's most hauntingly beautiful beach towns. If you're in your twenties you'll smile and nod at the joy and pain of Glynn's quest. If you're not in your twenties, he'll make you feel as if you are. A gorgeous debut."

"As a microcosmic rendition of a lost summer's drunken rhythms and Glynn's slowly unfolding realization about his own sexuality, the writing resonates with a shimmery tingle."

"It's at its most personal that his memoir shines brightest, grasping at the many ways there are to love and be and ultimately reveling in them."

"John Glynn's Out East is a combination travelogue and memoir. He brings the eye of a cultural explorer to the time-honored ritual of summertime house shares by young people from the city in the beach communities of Long Island and while this in and of itself would be plenty to compel a reader's attention, the book does so much more, layering in the story of the author's own sexual awakening amid the dunes and the drinks and the bravura. His voice throughout, as comforting as a distant horizon and as light as a passing cloud, heralds the arrival of a wonderful new talent."

"Slyly funny and heroically honest, Out East will charm you on every page, even as you ache for its sensitive and searching narrator. With his gorgeous, precise, soulful prose and discerning eye for sociological detail, John Glynn offers a perceptive, youthful, and heartfelt summertime story of love and longing on the hedonistic shores of Long Island that revives the spirit of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby to speak for our present moment."

"Glynn has a documentarian's eye and a poet's tongue. He describes an idyllic, privileged summer suffused with personal turmoil and millennial malaise with such beautiful precision. This book is a rare glimpse into an elusive feeling, part dreamlike crush, part seismic shift. This is a memoir about his life but it also generously and wisely shifts perspectives to give a fuller portrait of a group of friends in transition."

"In his tender and inspiring coming-of-age debut, John Glynn explores how a single summer of beer pong, sunshine, and friendship showed him it was time to be honest with the world, and with himself."

"Prepare to feel overwhelmed with emotion and the need to start a John Glynn fan club."

"Out is a heart-wrenching reminder of the precarious emotional inner life that undulates just beneath the surface, even for people who seem as though they have it all"

"A heartfelt coming-of-age story and a fond depiction of a tight-knit friend circle."

"An incredible debut memoir"

"Out East is a testament to falling in love with love itself, with the frightening prospect of finally being accepted for exactly who you are."