Considering the scope of Jennifer duBois’ third novel, THE SPECTATORS, it’s especially impressive that she manages to elicit as much emotional and empathetic connection as she does. The book is told from two perspectives and in two timelines. One, narrated by Semi, begins in 1969, in the cautiously euphoric period post-Stonewall when New York’s gay community started to believe that things were about to change for the better. The other takes place in 1993 and is told from the third-person perspective of Cel, a young woman who has escaped her working-class New Hampshire roots, graduated from Smith, and landed a job (much to her own occasional embarrassment and mystification) doing PR and wrangling guests for a “Jerry Springer”–like TV show called “The Mattie M. Show.”

At the center of these two narratives is Matthew Miller (aka Mattie M.), whose enigmatic presence winds through both. In Semi’s story, Miller is an idealistic defense lawyer (who first encounters Semi and his friends when he defends them after a gay bar bust) and later a political candidate who also happens to be a closeted gay man and, eventually, Semi’s lover. In 1993, Matthew Miller has become Mattie M., a celebrity talk show host whose personal history (and even his personality) remains more or less a mystery to his long-suffering staff.

"In addition to thoughtful portraits of her central characters, duBois peoples THE SPECTATORS with numerous well-drawn secondary characters, all of whom help ground the narrative and provide personal insights to round out her broad history."

The novel’s most acute crisis occurs near the beginning, in 1993, when a Columbine-like school shooting stuns the country. DuBois effectively portrays what it was like to watch a tragedy unfold in the 1990s, as she depicts people repeating hearsay and crowding around TV screens in bars to watch CNN --- rather than turning to Twitter as they would do today. These scenes are also a vivid reminder of what it felt like to be shocked by a school shooting, to which we’ve become all too numb 25 years and countless mass shootings later. It’s this phenomenon in part that underlies duBois’ themes, about our society’s (and our personal?) implications in acts of violence and violent culture, which we are more than happy to observe and even, on some level, revel in, from the relative safety of our homes.

Cel herself is stunned and sickened by the news, but it soon has a direct impact on her life when it’s revealed that the high school student shooters were big fans of “The Mattie M. Show.” Near the end of the book, we learn that one of the shooters has penned a fan letter of sorts to Mattie M., which duBois powerfully includes in its entirety.

Semi’s portions of the novel --- which trace the evolution of the gay community from that post-Stonewall heyday into the bleak horrors of the AIDS crisis --- are the more visceral and emotional ones in the book, as his personal history of love and betrayal plays out against the backdrop of LGBT history. Cel’s portions have emotional heft, too --- not just the school shootings and their aftermath but also her interrogation of who she is and why she ended up in this place. However, her attempts to uncover the man behind the “Mattie M.” mystique are less compelling than her own journey.

In addition to thoughtful portraits of her central characters, duBois peoples THE SPECTATORS with numerous well-drawn secondary characters, all of whom help ground the narrative and provide personal insights to round out her broad history.