Alejandro Varela’s “Middle Spoon”

Eric Newman speaks to Alejandro Varela about his latest novel, “Middle Spoon.”

By LARB Radio HourSeptember 26, 2025

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Eric Newman speaks to Alejandro Varela about his latest novel, Middle Spoon. Told in epistolary form through the narrator’s unsent emails, the novel opens in the immediate aftermath of a devastating breakup. The breakup, like the relationship, was complicated. It was the narrator’s first experience with polyamory, and his now ex-boyfriend ended things because the narrator refused to leave his husband and two children. As it grapples with the self-shattering experience of heartbreak, Middle Spoon explores how we think about love beyond the romantic couple, and how we navigate the faultines of intimacy, desire, race, and class.

Eric and Alejandro dive into the cultural discourse around polyamory—why it seems to be more visible in recent years and what’s driving the backlash to it–as well as how capitalism shapes modern love. They also discuss the challenges of thinking and writing through heartbreak, and how grief and love can make us unreliable narrators.