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I finished ‘Saints of Augustine’ last night and although I’ve got three other reviews that need writing I just have to tell you all about it right now. ‘Saints of Augustine’ is based around the kind of narrative device I would usually avoid. Two characters keep secrets, and while the reader knows exactly what they’re thinking none of the other characters do. That usually creates too tense a read for me. Sometimes the other characters fail to understand what’s going on and come off as insensitive jerks, sometimes the secrets are stupid and I can’t understand why the main characters will not just tell everyone. Either way my hackles get raised and I spend most of the time physically tight and wound up enough to start throwing things. I won’t pretend P E Ryan’s book didn’t cause the same kind of reaction at times. I spent a lot of time being hacked off at Charlie and Sam’s parents, but instead of wanting to avoid the book or throw it at the wall I wanted to keep reading. I felt I might explode with anticipation if I didn’t find out what happened. I missed a dramatic reveal on Home and Away so I could finish it in one day and I really, really like Australian soaps.
A year ago Charlie and Sam were best friends who couldn’t have been much closer. As Sam and Charlie’s friendship grows Sam begins to have feelings for Charlie, although he knows Charlie is straight. Sam thinks that if Charlie finds out it will muck up their friendship, so in an attempt to stop himself from destroying their friendship by making a move, he ends their friendship. This sounds like the stupidest reasoning ever until it becomes apparent that while Sam’s afraid of ruining his friendship with Charlie he’s ten billion times more afraid that someone will find out he’s gay. That would mean he’d have to admit it to everyone else before he’s even admitted it to himself, despite acknowledging that he fancies Charlie. Sam’s thought process captures all the confusion and conflict of trying to work out how to tell people what you are when you’re not even sure yourself.
Sam and Charlie’s friendship ends at the worst possible time for Charlie. His mum gets sick and dies, his dad starts drinking heavily and Charlie smokes pot with a dealer who is amazingly accommodating about when he’d like to be paid back, until he needs money in a hurry. Charlie needs a friend more than ever and he doesn’t even know what he’s done to make Sam cut him dead.
The majority of the book takes place while the boys are still not talking. Charlie fights with furstrated feelings about his dad and tries to grieve for his mum alone. Sam fights with his mum about her new, homophobic boyfriend, tries to adjust to his dad’s absence and meets a boy who might make him brave enough to accept who he is. It’s only in the last one hundred pages or so that the boys are forced together by a night of dramatic events, and begin to rebuild the friendship that will help both of them face what they’ve been hiding from.
As I said above this book is full of dramatic tension, despite everything the reader's acces to the boy's thoughts. I think most of the tension came from the conflicts between the boys and their parents. I can’t imagine many readers sympathizing with the parents’ situations at the beginning of the book, even though they are both damaged by the relationships they have lost. I found both Charlie’s dad and Sam’s mum hugely frustrating characters until the end of the book, when they both demonstrate the capacity for change. There were points where I’d want to try and be understanding about how hard it must have been for Sam’s mum to have her husband leave her, and for Charlie’s dad to lose his wife, but then they’d show themselves to be so willfully blind to what their kids were going through that I’d want to slap them. I warmed to them right at the end though and I wanted to believe that they would both try to do better for their kids.
Charlie and Sam are warm, sympathetic characters. There was so much to like about them from Charlie’s pride in his shiny VW bug, to the fact that Sam really cared about the few occasions he lied and that he strove to be authentic, even though he sometimes failed. I liked that when they finally did meet they were eager to talk about their problems and dispelled the myth that men won’t talk about deep issues to their best friends. I enjoyed hearing from them both separately and contrasting these narratives of half-happy lives which were full of lies, with the lighter, more cheerful people they were once they’d talked to each other. I was really glad that the friendship side of the story was given as much weight as the romantic relationships in the book. There should be more books that spend time explaining the intricacies of friendships, without rating them lower than romantic relationships. I even liked the happy, ideal ending that casually tried to explain how imperfect it really was. I’m almost getting used to that in YA now, although sometimes I wonder if there are YA books where everything doesn’t work out in the best way.
‘Saints of Augustine’ is a fantastic book about male friendship and how talking can fix what seem to be the toughest of problems. I’d recommend it to anyone going through a hard time, who wants to know where to turn. I’d also recommend it to anyone who wants to read a fun first date story, as Charlie and his new love interest Justin make a very cute couple.
If you liked 'Saints of Augustine' you might also enjoy finding out about 'What They Always Tell Us' and 'David Inside Out'.
Random Areas of Exploration:
Do you feel YA books are highly moralized, although they contain more modern, liberal morals?
Do you like or dislike the fact that many YA novels end happily?
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