48 pages • 1 hour read
Casey McQuistonThe Pairing (The Proposition, #3)
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Casey McQuiston
McQuiston is known for their engaging and heartfelt queer romances. They made their debut as an author in 2019 with the new adult book Red, White, and Royal Blue. The novel weaves an enemies-to-lovers, secret relationship love story between an English prince and the son of the first woman president of the United States. Red, White, and Royal Blue won the Goodreads Awards for Best Romance and an Alex Award, and the TV film adaptation was nominated for an Emmy. McQuiston’s second novel, One Last Stop (2021), is a Sapphic romance with elements of science fiction and magical realism. Twenty-three-year-old August falls in love with Jane, a woman from the 1970s who’s trapped on the New York subway in 2020. One Last Stop won the RUSA Award and was on The New York Times 100 Notable Books and Bookpage’s Top Ten Romance Novels in 2021. McQuiston made their young adult debut in 2022 with I Kissed Shara Wheeler. The novel incorporates elements of mystery and thrillers into a romantic comedy as high school senior Chloe Green searches for her missing rival. The novel was named a Stonewall Honor Book in 2023, an award that recognizes exceptional merit in books relating to the LGBTQ+ experience.
In keeping with McQuiston’s reputation, The Pairing is a joyful queer love story and an instant bestseller. Just as the author incorporated different genres in their earlier works, they draw upon food and travel fiction to give their 2024 romantic comedy a distinctive flavor. Like Theo Flowerday in The Pairing, McQuiston is bisexual and nonbinary, and their own experiences growing up queer motivate their work as a writer: “Queer fiction was such a formative experience for me because as a young person, it was the safest place I had to engage with queerness and the closest thing to a tangible queer community I could access” (“The 2023 Out100 Storytellers: Casey McQuistion.” Out, 2023). Through their romantic comedies, McQuiston offers readers the same sense of affirmation and connection that helped them as a young person.
Literary Context: Contemporary LGBTQ+ Romantic Fiction
McQuiston draws upon the tropes of romantic fiction to craft a queer love story that is engaging yet comfortingly familiar. Some of the main expectations that readers bring to romantic comedies are humor, passion, and a happy ending. McQuiston delivers by maintaining an overall playful tone, spicing up the story with several sex scenes, and delivering an epilogue in which the two lovers open a restaurant together in France. At the same time, McQuiston plays upon some generic tropes in ways that may surprise readers. Even after Theo and Kit share a dramatic kiss and confess their love, they nearly talk themselves out of chasing their happily ever after. Another trait that makes The Pairing stand out is the way that McQuiston uses elements of food and travel fiction to satisfy romantic conventions. In keeping with the forced proximity trope, Theo and Kit’s culinary tour requires them to share a seat on the bus and a room in an Italian villa.
McQuiston’s novel is part of the vibrant contemporary LGBTQ+ romantic fiction scene. The story sometimes alludes to other queer narratives, such as the peach scene that invokes André Aciman’s Lambda Literary Award-winning novel Call Me By Your Name (2007). Aciman’s novel, like many queer romances and much of literature as a whole, focuses on cisgendered individuals. By making one of the main characters of The Pairing nonbinary, McQuiston is among the authors helping to make the genre more representative of the diversity within the LGBTQ+ community. Other contemporary queer romances that deal with similar themes and tropes include Cynthia So’s If You Still Recognize Me (2022). Like Theo and Kit, Elsie and Joan are childhood best friends seeking a second chance in love. Another novel that explores the friction between two ex-lovers after their breakup is the Lambda Literary Award-winning fake-dating romance I’m So (Not) Over You (2022) by Kosoko Jackson. Contemporary queer romance authors like McQuiston create stories that celebrate the diversity of love.
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