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Straight

A Life in Circles

In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni

A novel, drawn from a life, by Obie Arthur

Author's Note

Some moments have stayed with me my entire life.

Others have faded, blurred together, or disappeared.

No version would be exact.

This is the story I'm choosing to tell.

— Obie Arthur

About the book

He thought it might be two weeks.

Obie was fourteen when his father picked him up at a T station in Brookline. It was June 9, 1989. He didn't know where he was going, but he knew something needed to change. He thought he might hike a mountain, or do a ropes course, or practice trust falls.

What follows is the mystery of a place built to push him to the brink and unmake everything he thought he knew about himself — part coming-of-age, part forbidden love, part generational trauma, seen through the eyes of a lost fourteen-year-old trying to find out where he belongs.

Straight: A Life in Circles is a novel based on a true story. Names and details changed.

From the contents

  • 01
    The Circle Closes “Whatever version of myself had been holding court at the T stop a moment earlier was already gone.”
  • 12
    Nevermore “It would take years to shake the tap tap tapping on the window. Neverland was Nevermore.”
  • 27
    First Night “Closest to the way out. Still nowhere to go.”
  • 42
    Obie the Arts “I waited for the shift. For the grin to turn mean. For the room to tilt.”
  • 54
    Reckoning “Of the stranger standing in her kitchen wearing her son's face.”
  • 67
    The Book of Obadiah “Not sadness exactly. Not relief. Release.”
  • 77
    Epilogue “The story did not become lighter. I finally grew strong enough to hold it.”

77 chapters. One epilogue that took nearly 40 years to write.

Advance readers & listeners

Read it, or hear it, before anyone else does.

The book is finished, and so is the audiobook: all 77 chapters, narrated with AI, coming soon to Spotify. Before it goes to publishers, I'm looking for a small number of early readers and listeners willing to read it or listen to it and, if it moves you, say so somewhere honest.

From the book · the audiobook

Hear it.

Hover over a passage to hear it read from the finished audiobook. On a phone, tap it.

“
“Hi Obie, love ya Obie.” The sound was attacking, sharp and sudden. It wasn't mocking. It wasn't kind either. It was loud, unified, rehearsed, like a military salute.
From Chapter Fifteen, “Love Ya, Obie”
“
It was like language itself had been rerouted.
From Chapter Twenty-Seven, “First Night”
“
I waited for the shift. For the grin to turn mean. For the room to tilt.
From Chapter Forty-Two, “Obie the Arts”
“
Violence had become the language of the room.
From Chapter Sixty-Five, “In the Mouth of Madness”

Pass it on

content note: depicts a real teen program
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Go deeper The World of Straight

The book has a whole world around it. The songs that were playing, the streets he ran, the newspaper the morning he went in, the people in the room, and the real history behind all of it. Wander in.

▶ The mixtapeEvery song Obie hears in the book, on a tape that spins while it plays. The map of the CircleThirteen places around Cleveland Circle. Tap one and hear it from the audiobook. The front pageFriday, June 9, 1989. The news, the charts and the movies the day it began. The people in the roomCarol and her notebook. Rick and his coffee cup. Oldcomers, newcomers, host families. How the program workedFive phases, the belt loop, host homes, Moral Inventories. The real Straight1970 to 2023. A First Lady, a princess, 60 Minutes, the courts, and the closing. The lexiconSixty words. Motivating. Oldcomer. T&R. Learn them. You will be using them. Phase OneThe fake recruitment campaign. The posters smile. That’s the problem.
Enter the World of Straight →

From the readers

Come in. Say something.

Leave a comment on the book — Obie reads everything himself. For the podcast, visit The Fakefancast.

Comment on the book

What landed, what didn't, what you caught that nobody else did.

Obie Arthur

About the author

Obie Arthur

Obie lives in Boston with his wife and two children.

Straight: A Life in Circles is his first book — started, stalled, and rewritten across most of his adult life, and finally finished at night, after the rest of the house had gone to sleep.