Boy Meets Boy - David Levithan

David Levithan’s own words best explain why ‘Boy Meets Boy’ is so wonderful:

‘With Boy Meets Boy, I basically set out to write the book that I dreamed of getting as an editor - a book about gay teens that doesn't conform to the old norms about gay teens in literature (i.e. it has to be about a gay uncle, or a teen who gets beaten up for being gay, or about outcasts who come out and find they're still outcasts, albeit outcasts with their outcastedness in common.)’

Achieved in style.

‘I’m often asked if the book is a work of fantasy or a work of reality, and the answer is right down the middle - it's about where we're going, and where we should be.’

Awesome answer to a tough question.

Paul, Tony and Joni go to see a friend dj at their local chain bookstore. In the bookstore Paul meets Noah, who has just transferred to his school. They start dating and everything is lovely for a time, but then Noah starts to pull away and Paul makes a mistake with an ex called Kyle, who needs a supportive friend. Joni starts dating someone Paul dislikes. Tony ends up grounded by his parents, because they want to set him on the path to straight enlightenment. Paul must find a way to bring those he cares about to a happy place, in time for the big Dowager dance.

In Paul’s town being gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transsexual is not a problem. The gay scene and the straight scene joined together and his school year all hang out together. Sexual identity is fluid and boundaries have been smudged, an idea which Levithan amusingly explores by pairing less heard of combinations to create new high school activities, for example there’s a team that bowls while answering quiz questions and the cheerleading team does motorcycle tricks. Levithan uses unusual pairings in a similar way, to challenge ideas about the link between personality and sexuality. One of his characters, a transvestite called Infinite Darleen, is both Homecoming Queen and a quarterback, pushing against the idea that you can be sporty, or interested in fashion, but not both. These surprising combinations are a big part of the small book’s charm.

In the background there are signs that some people would feel more comfortable if everyone was labelled one way or the other. Paul’s ex-boyfriend Kyle can’t handle discovering that he’s bisexual, rather than gay or straight. He wants to be ‘be one or the other’. Other characters express negative feelings about Infinite Darleen, whose behaviour transcends any stereotypical gender categorisation. It’s perhaps unsurprising to find these words coming from a bicurious macho team mate, Chuck, who feels Darleen should ‘just enter the beauty contests instead of heading onto the gridiron…’ but Levithan takes an extremely honest tack by showing that Darleen’s fellow drag queens also find the way she lives her life unacceptable as they ‘rarely sit with her at lunch.; they say she doesn’t take good enough care of her nails, and that she looks a little too buff in a tank top.’ It’s interesting to see that it’s not just straight characters like Tony’s parents, who embrace labels and boxes, it’s also conflicted characters like Chuck and Kyle, as well as out and proud characters, that help to create harmful definitions of right and wrong behaviour.

I feel like I’m making this book’s subject sound like a typical fraught battle between gay teenagers and the rest of the world. It’s not, a minority of the characters voice their dislike of how things work in Paul’s town, I just thought it was interesting to see how Levithan incorporates the problems of reality into his utopian society. Rather than allowing his book to be an entirely positive book, which might easily be dismissed as fantasy, or a morality tale he allows for problems in this generally happy society and creates voices for gay teenagers whose lives have not been as easy as Paul’s.

Overall this is a very happy book, full of charming details guaranteed to make readers laugh a little and smile. The ending is sweet, almost verging on whimsical without being overly saccharine. It cheered me up and it showed me all these new possibilities for authors writing books about gay characters. Typical coming out stories are still important, but Levithan reminds us that after coming out gay teens live and that they’re not all hiding in fear, or reviled by their classmates, even if some of them are. ‘Boy Meets Boy’ is an alternative voice, sweeter and softer than the hard tales of kids rejected and beaten for their sexuality, but no less important.

Other Reviews

The Naughtie Book Kitties
Dreaming in Books
The Booksmugglers
Portrait of a Woman

Thursday Thirteen - Historical Fiction I Have Loved

In the comments on my ‘Guernica’ review Danielle asked what other historical fiction I’d disliked and more importantly (because we do all like to find new books to read) which historical fiction I’d enjoyed. ‘Easy,’ I thought ‘I’ll just nip and have a look through my reading journal to see what historical I read and liked before I started blogging and make a list.

That would be one long list. Instead I thought I’d do a list in honour of Danielle’s regular feature ‘Thursday Thirteen’ where she creates themed reading lists based on what she’s interested in reading at the time. Here are thirteen historical novels I’ve really enjoyed:

‘Wolf Hall’ – Hilary Mantle: ‘Wolf Hall’ is the kind of history book I’d like to see more of. It plays around with language, structure, point of view (which inevitably means critics cry that it’s ‘so much more than a historical novel’) while telling a juicy story. Anyway, I’m sure you’ve all read enough about this one to know it follows Thomas Cromwell as he rises at Henry VII’s court, so I’ll leave ‘Wolf Hall’s new status as highest selling Booker to prod you in the direction of your nearest bookshop.

‘The Company of the Courtesan’ – Sarah Dunant: Fantastic story, well written and you can see that she’s worked hard to research 16th century Italy. You can’t go wrong with this story of a courtesan and her advisor who have to recreate her business in Venice, after they are forced to get out of Rome.

‘Life Class’ - Pat Barker: Barker once again takes up the theme of art in war. Three young art students work together and fall in love, before being plunged into the horrors of the First World War. It’s not quite as good as ‘Regeneration’, but it is very distinct from Barker’s previous examination of young artists at war and I was impressed by how she managed to reuse the same theme, without making ‘Life Class’ feel the same as ‘Regeneration’.

‘The Wedding Officer’ – Anthony Capella: Capella is one of the lighter writers on this list. I keep seeing him touted as the male Joanne Harris, which is weird because his grasp of sensual details just doesn’t compare with hers, but he does write about food quite a bit. An army officer is ordered to stop American soldiers marrying their Italian girlfriends, but is soon falling in love with a girl who works in her family restaurant. Oh and there’s an entertaining buffalo.

‘The Gates of Rome’ – Conn Iggulden: Excellent, excellent beginning to a series. In the first book of Igullden’s ‘Emperor at the Gates’ series we meet Julius Caesar and his lifelong friend Brutus, in their childhood years. It’s not just battles you’ll find in these books, there’s an in depth look at how Julius and Brutus’s relationship develops, then sours and a good root around through Roman politics.

‘The Far Pavillions’ – MM Kaye: Sweeping Indian drama that I’d be hard pressed to describe fully. There’s a romance, a young man who doesn’t fit in anywhere, army politics and the pervading spectacle of the Himalayan mountains.

‘The Visible World’ – Mark Slouka: ‘The Visible World’ is another case of a piece of historical fiction that plays with structure and hides secrets from the reader, while beguiling them with beautiful language. Its use of language could be compared with Mantel’s in ‘Wolf Hall’. Set in Czechoslovakia during the Second World War.

‘Martha Peake’ – Patrick Mcgrath: This book’s 17th century gothic creepiness will swallow you up. A young girl supports a drunken father who has been mangled by an accident of his own making.

‘Ten Cents a Dance’ – Christine Fletcher: ‘Ten Cents a Dance’ was my first exposure to the world of taxi dancing and young adult historical fiction. I’ve found there’s lots to explore in both areas. Ruby is a feisty girl, struggling to support her family with a job in a canning factory. When she meets a handsome young gangster he finds her a high paid job ‘dancing’ (he is a gangster, so it turns out to be seedy dancing).

'Burning Bright' – Tracy Chevalier: I find that this is the Chevalier novel no one likes, which I cannot understand at all. Alright the ending is a little sweet and moralistic, but then William Blake is a little sappily idealistic sometimes and the book is essentially explaining the genesis of Blake’s ‘Songs of Innocence’ and ‘Songs of Experience’. I liked this story about two kids from different backgrounds, a travelling circus and William Blake.

'The Needle in the Blood' – Sarah Bower: I think what I liked about Sarah Bower’s first book was that she tried something different. I’ve never read a novel where the invading Normans end up being sympathetic characters and I’ve never read a novel where embroidery is made to seem so vital and important. Lots to think about in this novel that imagines the creation of the Bayeux tapestry.

'Quicksilver' – Neal Stephenson: ‘Quicksilver’ is historical fiction, but not as we know it. Stephenson is very focused on 17th century ideas and sometimes there can be pages explaining mathematical or scientific ideas. There’s an entertaining cast of characters, full of big name 17th century scientific rock stars like Newton and Hooke. It’s also a brutal book where people die, horribly and disease is everywhere. I can’t say I understood everything the first time round, but I liked that Stephenson was willing to trust me as a reader, rather than trying to simplify things. I enjoyed the complexity and the seediness of this book. It’s part of a fat series, which means there’s lots of enjoy.

'Empress Orchid' – Anchee Min: Finally something completely different. An account of the daily life of an Imperial concubine in 19th century China. Orchid is taken in by the Emperor, but discovers that she and many other concubines may be kept waiting years before they get the chance to make an Imperial heir, which would bring great power. The air is full of conspiracies and concealments as Orchid schemes to get into the Emperor’s bed, but she is also shown as a fragile young girl who has to do extraordinary things to survive.

And two I thought were a waste of time:

'Labyrinth' – Kate Mosse: A perfect example of why historical fiction doesn’t need an alternating modern narrative to make it relevant. The modern story line was convoluted and silly, while the historical story was well paced and dark. Whenever the novel hit the present day I wished we were back in the past. I also found the writing a little repetitive.

'The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas' – John Boyne: Just awful. Twee and attempts to be moralistic, but the morals it’s based on are dodgy.

Have you read any of the books I liked? What’s the one piece of historical fiction you’d recommend I try next?