How We Named the Stars begins with a nameless narrator lovingly describing an individual named Daniel, whom the reader will soon meet. This prelude is filled with rich references to mythology and history, while set around a campfire with billowing smoke. An entrancing but curious opening. It is not until we reach the end of the novel that the identity of this mysterious narrator becomes clear. “Tonight I want to grab my camera, take a photo, and say, pointing to the screen, This is you. Can’t you see how I see you?”
Unsurprisingly, a persistent thematic thread runs through Andrés Ordorica’s debut novel that centers on Daniel Manuel de La Luna’s struggle with being seen. A young man — the son of immigrants from Mexico, the first generation to enter college — who has been confused, but also embarrassed by his sexuality, cannot discover who he is. At least, that is the case until he meets his roommate, the tall, athletic, and attractive Sam Morris. The two men hit it off almost immediately, despite Daniel’s reserved and awkward nature, compared to Sam’s gregariousness and seemingly confident disposition.
But darkness hovers over this budding friendship and romance, not least because Ordorica opens chapter one with: “Sam’s dead,” his passing having occurred six weeks previously. The main narrative is told through Daniel’s perspective as a semi-expository story, with events summarized chronologically. (Each chapter has a small epigraph that thematically resonates with the chapter, which we discover are entries from Daniel’s Uncle’s diary from when he was around Daniel’s age (19) until passing away suddenly at 22. The relevance of this is important since Daniel’s Uncle was also a closeted gay man and their experiences run parallel throughout the book.) In hindsight, Daniel attempts to give meaning to what has occurred. This adds to some of the mystery as well, since we are not told right away how Sam dies or what exactly happens in their relationship. Instead, we are asked simply to read along and await revelation. But first, we are taken through what could be described as a classic coming-of-age story.
The narratives reverts repeatedly to the topic of being seen and, by extension, being known. Daniel is named after his mother’s brother, who was killed in a freak accident, and was the principal reason for the family’s departure from Mexico. The ever-presence of this grief is not lost on him: “The Truth was that it was heavy all throughout my childhood, because at the back of my mind, I felt like it was my responsibility to bring my mom and grandparents’ happiness and peace. To give them a version of Daniel who wouldn’t bring about pain.” Clearly, this pressure to behave like a “good son” alienates him from a sense of being fully free.
Daniel becomes more comfortable in his own identity, including the closeted part of himself. This is largely due to his close friendship with Sam, who remains a strangely invested, but also all-around good person for Daniel to have in his life. This mediates the crush Daniel has on Sam and provides the main conflict in this part of the work. When the two men finally level with one another, despite Sam’s uncomfortable recognition of his homosexuality for the first time, the two enter into a passionate but brief relationship. Daniel describes the outset and how, despite Sam’s refusal to “come out,” the two revel in one another: “Both of us were so full of desire and yet so afraid of the possibility of hurt, rejection even. I see that now.” The lack of transparency in feeling presents a wedge between the two lovers, since the flame burns hot in both of them, but quickly consumes that passion. It isn’t long before Daniel’s new understanding of himself and his desire to love openly are frustrated by Sam’s fear of coming out of the closet and how it could affect his other relationships.
As in the long novelistic tradition of portraying the paradoxes of love, here love is both an idealizing filter and a force that pierces the facades. Both of these aspects come to fruition here in prose that may remind the older reader of what such passion is like before experience conditions an individual to disregard one’s most profound feelings. For Daniel, it is a catalyzing experience that begins his development into a freer and, dare I say, better person: “I was a new man because of you.” The mysterious narrator who spoke at the beginning of this piece, if it has not been assumed already, was Sam, pining for Daniel months before the two of them finally confessed their mutual infatuation.
Of course, this is a tragedy, the cloud descends. Things were not meant to last, and what Daniel takes as a rejection from Sam at the end of their academic year, ends in tragedy as the two men never reconcile in person. Daniel is forced to pick up the pieces in the wake of Sam’s sudden passing. The core reason why this novel is told through journal entries is to track the process of Daniel seeking to let Sam go. Despite the formative experiences of having a true friend and lover, Daniel struggles to assess who he is in the wake of such a relationship. It takes about a third of the narrative for him to work this out. One of the final lines of part two summarizes this impulse: “One day I’d need to cease being a voyeur and instead be an active participant in my own life.”
Most of the first half of the novel finds Daniel being told to attend or taken passively to activities. He allows his life to be shaped by what is expected of him. It takes the disruption and loss of Sam to try to reclaim his own life. But then, there is the supportive relationship he enjoys with his maternal grandfather — a model of kind and sensitive masculinity that allows Daniel to open up and be seen by this father figure.
Ordorica leaves the novel open-ended without a clear path for Daniel in this post-Sam reality, but such closure is not the point here. After a date gone horrifically wrong, Daniel has an epiphany: “I needed to be my savior.” Reaffirmed later by the revelation of reconnecting with the legacy of his namesake, Daniel makes a promise — “To live. To be happy. To be free.” The new revelation that his uncle was also gay makes him feel more at ease. He is not alone, and this is just enough of a relief to allow the future to feel possible.
Both a self-aware reflection on what it means to love your whole self and a tragicomedy of young love, Ordorica’s How We Named the Stars offers a complex vision of introspection.
[Published by Tin House Books on January 30, 2024, 304 pages, $17.95 US/$23.95 CAN, paperback]