An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail

‘An Army of Lovers Cannot Fail is a florilegium of countersexual kinmaking, survival strategy, lesbian comradeship, dinner parties full of queer ancestors, fugitive photography, transfeminist acting-up, insurrectionary eroticism and pieces of anonymous queer archival ephemera from divers lands, brought alive with the help of critical fabulation. Even beyond straight existence, “life contracts around the hearth,” as Hélène Giannecchini writes, and “because all of our time does not belong to us, we bank on the couple.” But the domination of the couple-form over human life can and must be brought to an end, and Giannecchini deftly points to all the places where it is already dead (or perhaps always was). At the heart of this beautiful book, then, lies a deceptively incendiary critique of capitalist society. It asks a direly urgent question: can humanity rise to the challenge of the term “friend”? If not, how do we propose to live together?’
— Sophie Lewis, author of Abolish the Family

‘We could be friends, we could be lovers, we could be comrades. Queer people are specialists in the art of chosen families because we have to be. Giannecchini’s book is not just about such bonds, it’s made by making them. In a world intent on crushing everyone into isolated particles, this is an essential guide for everyone in how to glue together a fuller and deeper life.’
— McKenzie Wark, author of Love and Money, Sex and Death

‘As someone who has long struggled with conventional ideas of family and marriage, this searching work by Hélène Giannecchini swings open the doors to a great hall of kinship, camaraderie, companionship and neighbourliness. She writes with love and optimism and a desire that we may all become part of communities in which we endeavour, as friends, to hold one another up. I read this at a difficult moment in my own life, a period shaped by the death of my father, and I am grateful to have been able to read it.’
— Lara Pawson, author of Spent Light

’What a stunning, deep book! Giannecchini has dug down to the marrow, to find the sparkling cells that queer people through the ages have always made – the lights we’ve used to find each other. I am so relieved that this book found me, because life without books like these, as without friends, is lonely. Giannecchini’s work is to listen hard, to the voices of our queer elders, and to the signals from her own heart, and to share her findings with the world – we are all richer for her work. The writing shines; it is always brief, but never fast. Always thoughtful, but never heavy. I couldn’t stop reading, and I want to start again immediately.’
— Adam Zmith, author of Solemates

‘This book is a small revolution in contemporary French writing.’
— Collateral

‘Hélène Giannecchini never gives the impression of appropriating the stories of others.... [T]he quality of the author’s focus draws from the resources she mobilizes to write about friendship: her curiosity and sensitivity towards fragile lives are combined with an imagination that grants dignity to that which is forgotten by history, and allows us to talk about those ties that have no name.’
— En Attendant Nadeau

‘Hélène Giannecchini invites us to explore the thousand and one ways of composing an alternative genealogy. Essay, non-fiction or novel? We can’t decide and we don’t need to, because this book is so powerful.’
— L’Humanité

‘A compelling work, between investigation and narrative.’
— Le Monde