Claude Peck, The Minnesota Star Tribune

The narrator of Alejandro Varela’s novel-slash-diatribe about polyamory in contemporary gay life is a self-professed overthinker/oversharer who mounts a full-throated defense of open relationships. Polyamorists must await another champion, however, since the one here fails to “make the case.”

The title itself is misleading. A “Middle Spoon” would be one of three people cuddling in bed. Which doesn’t happen in Varela’s conception. An unnamed 40-something, Latino narrator (who seems to be a stand-in for the writer) with an unnamed 40-something white husband and two adopted adolescents, has been dumped by Ben, his younger white boyfriend. While Ben and the narrator carried on a torrid year-long romance, with the permission of the (doormat-y) husband o

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