Published 26th May 2026 by riverrun.
From the cover of the book:
East Village, summer of 1984. Renata is a young dyke-about-town who has the ability to see ghosts, which has been happening more and more frequently as her friends have started dying of what has recently been named AIDS.
So, when her best friend Mark dies, she assumes she'll see him again. There's no way Mark wouldn't give her a chance to say goodbye, would he? But to her disappointment - and increasingly, her concern - Mark doesn't appear.
Renata has other problems, too. A mysterious, police-like force has begun ridding their East Village neighbourhood of anything abnormal or inexplicable. At first, she's sure they're scam artists, but it becomes clear they're actually trapping ghosts. With her band of lovably eccentric pals and lovers, Renata is determined to fight back against the erasure of her friends' memories and the sanitizing of her beloved New York.
Both heartbreaking and healing, tragic and triumphant, Waiting on a Friend is a magical retelling of queer history and a celebration of youth and camaraderie. With pathos and humour, empathy and an edge, Natalie Adler freshly reimagines the past for a new generation, reclaiming the spirit of resistance and determination that would become one of the era's defining legacies.
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East Village, New York. Summer, 1984. Renata is a young lesbian in New York City. It is a summer punctuated with loss after loss of her queer friends, which is particularly hard for her, as she has the gift of 'seeing dead people'
However, the one ghost she does want to see, that of her recently deceased gay best friend, Mark, refuses to appear. Instead, she is being haunted by Francois, a friend of theirs who died a particularly gruelling AIDS related death. Francois appears at inopportune moments, his face a mask of pain, frequently accompanied by piercing screams. It is a happening not conducive to conducting romantic relationships, so when she hears of the strange Manhattan Remediation organisation who claim to be able to remove 'discomfort' from your living situation she gives them a call...
Set against the heartrending AIDS and heroin crises of the mid-1980s, Natalie Adler's novel is a powerful exploration of loss, violence, stigma and prejudice. In the midst of a constant battering of grief, Renata is trying to negotiate her own childhood trauma with her addict mother, while wading through the appearances of ghosts all over New York - most significantly in her own flat, which Francois refuses to vacate. At the same time, she longs for a glimpse of her bestie Mark, who she has shared so much with, but who does not respond to her yearning.
Meanwhile the sinister Manhattan Remediation team are gadding about the city, hoovering up spirits in a way reminiscent of the (who you gonna call...?) Ghostbusters guys - and storing the troublesome spectres in a storage facility. Francois disturbing presence leads Renata to call for help from them, but she begins to suspect there is something odd about their intentions, that involves gentrifying the area for Yuppies to move in rather than helping out its unsettled eclectic residents.
The themes run thick and fast in this beautifully written novel, rich in explorations of loss, violence, stigma and prejudice. It is a time those of us old enough to have lived through cannot fail to forget. But it is not all darkness, as friendship, love, dark humour, and the journey towards emotional healing play a part in the story too. Renata's voice is incredibly vivid, and I loved how Adler delves into her struggles with the living at the expense of her preoccupation with the dead - especially when it comes to affairs of the heart.
This is one of those books that lingers in the mind, not just for the difficult memories it evokes of time and place, but for the thought provoking way Adler echoes the elements of trapped ghosts in those about the people left behind and unable to move on. Highly recommended!
Waiting on a Friend is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook and audio formats.
Thank you to riverrun for sending me a proof of this book.
About the author:
Natalie Adler is an editor at Lux magazine. She was a 2022-23 Susan Kamil Emerging Writer Fellow at the Center for Fiction. She has an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College and a PhD in comparative literature from Brown University. She is from New Jersey and lives in New York City.
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