Like a child born of the bell hooks classic All About Love and Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Adam Gnade’s latest autobiographical novel takes a good, hard look at love in many forms—romantic, platonic, love of place, of chosen family, of destiny and purpose. Structured in large part as a book of lists, I Wish to Say Lovely Things is a big-hearted look at what it is to stay loving and gentle in a violent age—a graceful, philosophical, clear-eyed beacon with which to light your path through this painful, exhausting, and tremendously magnificent life.