The tenth child of a fantasist mother and an absent millionaire, Matty Crickholme is growing
into a sexually bewildered, neurotic young man. Through the collected paraphernalia of an
unconventional childhood, Alex Kovacs creates a quirky, kaleidoscopic rumination on family and
how it shapes us—for better or worse.
Sexology follows the strange, wonderful, fluxional world of the Crickholmes, where
nonconformism is celebrated, siblings form autonomous republics, and eccentricity reigns
supreme. The Crickholme siblings youthful exploits take them on myriad paths: a hermetic
psychic, a dog trainer, an ice cream purveyoress, a missing person. Between memories,
factoids, letters, and old photographs, Matty investigates how their offbeat rearing made them
the adults they became, and how fantasy and convention collide.
Alex Kovacs’s writings have received acclaim for their invention, wit, and astute observations of
our absurd world. Sexology brings this intellectual playfulness to the story of the Crickholmes
with a unique prose that evokes the complex emotional landscapes of W.G. Sebald’s novels and
the sometimes-gentle, sometimes-devastating style of Susanna Clarke. The result is an
entrancing, incomparable medley.
