The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson review – a new bent for genre and gender

Dazzling language, queer theory and domestic bliss meet in a radical love story, now making a long-deserved UK debut for its brilliant author

Fifteen years ago the poet, academic and pioneering writer-of-the-self Maggie Nelson startled the American literary world with the first of a series of books that defied genre, mixing autobiography and theory to question life from every angle. So far none of her nine books (four works of poetry, five of nonfiction) has been published here, and she remains relatively unknown. This is about to change with the publication of The Argonauts, which has been tremendously successful in the US and deserves to be here as well.

Up to now, Nelson has brought her always questioning, sometimes wonderfully lyrical, intelligence to subjects as diverse as the murder of her aunt and the nature of the colour blue. But she has not written about her “queer” life, and The Argonauts is in part an attempt to do so. However, it’s typically oblique in its approach to queerness, which makes the plot, such as it is, hard to pin down.

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