Steven Rigolosi, 2009.  The gimmick here is that the six main characters in the book - one of whom is murdered early on while the other five try to figure it out - aren’t identified by gender or sexuality.  Their names are Robin, Lee, Law, J., Chris, and Alex, and we never find out whether they’re male or female, straight or gay.  But the real hook here is the preening first-person narration, reminding me of no lesser light than John Kennedy Toole in A Confederacy of Dunces.  Robin, who lives on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, describes her/his upcoming visit to Washington Heights thusly: “Though I have always been quite adventurous — some might even say intrepid — I will admit to being somewhat cowed at the prospect of going so far North on the island, into that no-man’s land of crack houses, brothels, and middle-class housing. For a person of my obvious breeding and means would likely stand out like a sore thumb amidst the pregnant teenagers and nascent terrorists from Middle Eastern nations, which would make me a likely target of aggression based on sheer envy and malice.”  Robin’s ego leads him/her to chase too many red herrings and ignore too many real threats, providing a comedic sideshow while giving the reader a chance to solve the mystery. This adult mystery could have big teen appeal due to its short page count, single plotline, and smug sense of humor.

Chris Crutcher, 2009.  These three novellas are linked by an unnecessary framing device: the main characters in each are attending the same anger management class, and the counselor provides a little bit of commentary and a data sheet on each of the protagonists.

Superfluous device aside, the stories are excellent.  The first stars recurring Crutcher character Sarah Byrnes, she of the face scars and shoulder chip from Crutcher’s 1993 Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes.  She hooks up with Angus Bethune for a road trip to Vegas to find the birth mom who let her stepfather burn her face, then abandoned her. Angus’s parents are divorced, and in a twist I haven’t seen before in fiction, they’re both remarried to persons of the same gender.  So Angus has two mommies and two daddies, and furthermore, they all get along. Nice.

The second story doesn’t have any gay content, but does feature a fight against school-paper censorship and a pot-smoking grandma. It’s also pretty disgusting, as the student journalist has a young foster sister who ignores the toilet whenever she gets mad, which is often.

The third novella is the gayest. Marcus James is the only black kid at his rural high school, and he’s also gay, which combination has not won him a lot of friends. The story opens, in fact, with his discovery of a pink noose on his locker. His investigation into the culprits finds a lot of resistance, as the punks who did it are the products of racist homophobic ancestors who also have a lot of local power.  Then Marcus not-so-mysteriously drowns in the lake, and über-Christian student Matt Miller takes over as the detective-activist.  I love that Crutcher portrayed a Christian teen in such a positive light when it would have been so easy to make him a hater, but why not let Marcus stay alive and have his own moment?

Julie Anne Peters, 2009.   I really, really want to like Julie Anne Peters’ books.  I try again with each new one, but I just can’t do it.  Rage follows the pattern of her 2003 Keeping You a Secret: it starts out as an interesting, realistic problem novel, but soon deteriorates into a melodramatic parody of same. 

Rage is narrated by Johanna, a good girl in unrequited love, from a distance, with bad-girl Reeve.  Reeve has a mysterious and scary home life and has slept with every girl in school.  When the two finally get together, Reeve repeatedly warns Johanna that she’s no good for her, and eventually starts hitting her.  Johanna’s lies to cover up her unexplained bruises and cuts ring painfully true, but her naïveté does not. She can’t fathom, for example, why Reeve and her twin brother might possibly have two different last names; she can’t even come up with one possibility. 

Still, so far so good, as same-sex relationship abuse is tragically real, and it’s great for Peters to point that out to girls who might think that having a girlfriend frees them from the possibility of dating violence. But then the book goes into that melodramatic downward spiral.  Reeve’s stepfather stabs her mother, then slits her brother’s throat.  It feels tacked-on and wrong; the book didn’t need to go there.  The violent relationship between the two girls was enough.

Jacqueline Woodson, 1995. Melanin Sun has been keeping a diary since he was little, and collecting stamps too, despite his friends’ taunts of “faggot” when he pursues these activities. Mel has it all figured out, though: “I knew it was faggy to collect stamps but I didn’t care. It was something I liked and as long as I didn’t start wanting to kiss on Ralphael and Sean, I was okay. A long time ago, I figured out there was two kids of ‘faggy.’  There’s the kind that I guess if I thought real hard, I kind of was. That’s the ‘faggy’ that really isn’t super macho and has notebooks to write stuff down in….The other kind of ‘faggy’ was the really messed-up kind.  That kind actually wanted to be with other guys the way I get to feeling when Angie comes around. That kind made me want to puke every time I thought about it - which wasn’t a lot.”

Soon, however, Mel is forced to think harder about gayness when he’s confronted with his mother’s lesbianism.  Not only is his mom gay, but she’s in love with a white woman.  Kristin is the first white person to ever enter their Brooklyn apartment, and her skin makes her that much more noticeable to the neighborhood busybodies. Mel has to deal with his own prejudices, the feeling that he’s losing his mother (because how can she love a white woman as well as him, a black boy?), and his friends’ gay-bashing. The slim volume is a classic problem novel done beautifully; no clichés here. Mel’s reactions feel real, and the conclusion doesn’t wrap up all the problems. Highly recommended, with bonus points for the Audre Lorde shout-out.

Alexandra Diaz, 2009.  Diaz’s first novel is told in three voices, with best friends Tara, Whitney Blaire, and Pinkie alternating chapters from their POVs.  Tara is a runner prepping for a marathon and sick of her boyfriend Brent. Pinkie is the mother hen of the group, but ironically she’s also the most immature, crushing on a teacher and calling him obsessively.  Whitney Blaire plays dual stock characters: the spoiled rich girl and the dumb blonde.

The story opens with rumors that Brent is sleeping with a slutty boy cheerleader, leading Tara to dump him and wonder about her feelings for new girl Riley, a femme gymnast with whom she has infinitely more in common than with her old BFFs Pinkie and Whitney Blaire. It takes Tara most of the book to figure out what she really wants from Riley, although the reader knows long before then.  Tara also has to come to terms with her father’s abandonment of the family and subsequent remarriage. She’s got a lot to deal with, and only Riley understands.  They don’t get it on until page 192, by which time Tara and Whitney Blaire hate each other over a misunderstanding, and Pinkie tries to play therapist but is squicked out by her newly lesbian friend. They all make up in the end.

Pinkie is an intriguing and layered secondary character, as is Tara’s mom, but Whitney Blaire falls flat.  Maybe an entire book devoted to her would help us get into her head better, but as it is, she’s just a stereotype. Riley definitely isn’t - as Pinkie says, “Riley, she can’t be….I mean, she’s so pretty,” with her waistlength hair and her choice of sport. Tara’s slow realization about her attraction to Riley is realistic, and she doesn’t turn it into an identity; instead, she believes her mom when she says, “‘So maybe you’re someone who falls in love with a person, not a gender.’”  Indeed.  Fluid sexuality in YA - I love it.

Libba Bray, 2009.  I would never have picked up this book if it hadn’t won the Printz.  It just sounded too intentionally wacky, which I dislike.  Sentences like this one from the jacket flap turn me off: “With the help of Gonzo, a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf, and a yard gnome who just might be the Viking god Balder, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America of smoothie-drinking happiness cults, parallel-universe-hopping physicists, mythic New Orleans jazz musicians, whacked-out television game shows, snow-globe vigilantes, and disenfranchised, fame-hungry teens into the heart of what matters most.”  Eh.  Give me a decent character study and a clean-lined plot any time over a goofy ensemble cast…although I do like a good road trip.

I didn’t expect to finish the book, but instead I roared through its 480 pages in a couple of nights. It’s basically a coming-of-age story, and it does have sort of a wacky cast, but Gonzo is a strong and believable sidekick, and Balder is so cute and endearing!  And the smoothie cult is pretty hilarious. I could have done without the parallel-universe sideshow, but it was fine really. I guess what I’m saying is that most of the wackiness was far from extraneous.  I guess what I’m really saying is that I liked the book.  A lot.

And I didn’t expect it to be gay!  But it so is.  There are hints early on, when a trio of stoners keeps talking about female hotties, although one of the trio is named Rachel.  But then, in a twist I really didn’t see coming, Gonzo comes out of the closet!  I’d assumed he was written as mostly asexual because so many characters with disabilities just are, but no - gay all along.  Kudos, Libba Bray.

Bennett Madison, August 2009. This is one of those stories of a mousy teen who gets a new bad-girl best friend and starts shoplifting and dressing like a ho, but it doesn’t feature the clichéd ending of so many of those stories; Val doesn’t come to the sudden realization that she can Just Be Herself and dump Francie for a more suitable companion.  Instead, she goes on one final shoplifting spree and connives to leave Francie with all the blame in a weird, magical ending that leaves the reader wondering whether Francie was only a figment of Val’s imagination all along.

Val’s brother, probably in his twenties, is gay and allegedly dying. It’s never specified what exactly he’s got, or whether he’s got anything at all.  His best friend Liz says at one point that he’s “dying of boredom.”  Jesse is portrayed as a fairly cool older brother, but the kind who serves morning cocktails to his teenage sister because he’s given up on life.  He’s not a great role model, but he is a realistic character, one of whose attributes is gayness. It seems incidental to the character.

There are also a couple of lesbo hints between Val and Francie; they make out at one point, and their desperate need for one another is intense enough to suggest they’re soulmates, especially when compared to their lukewarm feelings toward Francie’s boyfriend Max. Of course, if Francie isn’t real, this theory isn’t either.

Lauren Myracle, October 2009. This fun middle-grade novel doesn’t break any new ground, but has a good time with an old story: Fifth-grade queen bee Modessa and her clique enjoy tormenting other girls, who band together to get her back and end up becoming best buds.  The fact that they connect via a social-networking site that one of them has created herself makes up for the too-cutesy device of giving each girl a flower name.*  One of the girls, Camilla, has two mommies.  This is mentioned in passing a few times, but never used against her, even by the bitchy crowd.

*I admit I might have approved of this more if one had been named Daisy.

Michael Cart, ed., 2009.  The long break since my last post reflects my difficulty with finishing books of short stories.  I have trouble getting into them; they’re just too short and I don’t have the chance to identify with the characters.  This isn’t the fault of the renowned list of authors (I was familiar with ten of the twelve), but it did take me a while to finish the book.

There’s been tons of buzz about David Levithan’s contribution, “A Word from the Nearly Distant Past,” but although I may well be Levithan’s biggest fan, I’m not sure this even qualifies as a story. It’s more of the kind of speech your sixties-feminist mother might give you about how young women today have it so easy because of the ground she broke at protest marches back in the day.  And while I agree it’s important to remember the past, I wonder how teens feel about this story.  Does it really speak to them?

I felt the same way about Gregory Maguire’s 117-page….what? novella?  Again, not a story and not for teens.  I loved it actually, but I’m 34.  Am I not giving teens enough credit when I say that they might not want to read this book about men in their forties?  Yes, there are flashbacks to college, when Blaise and Faroukh began their relationship, but most of the book is about men the age of teens’ dads.

Rounding out the trio of really-for-adults contributions is Ariel Schrag’s hilarious comic about a day at Dyke March: meeting up at the BART station, looking at naked girls, indulging in tequila and pot, “us[ing a] rich fag’s bathroom,” and drunkenly texting her girlfriend on the East Coast.  Probably my favorite story in the book, but - say it with me - will teens relate?

The rest of the contributions did seem to speak to teens. Jacqueline Woodson wrote a touching if plotless vignette about a little boy crossing gender borders as well as racial ones; he’s half-black and half-white and was born a girl.  Francesca Lia Block’s story about a pair of troubled teens who make a connection online (one cuts, one has gender issues) was strong, as was Julie Anne Peters’s story in two voices about a pair of girlfriends having sex for the first time.  Sweet and sexy, this is the best thing Peter’s ever written. Emma Donoghue’s epistolary story reminds teens of the bad old days when gay people weren’t allowed to get married, but unlike Levithan’s, succeeds in doing this in a way that teens will understand: the letter-writer is a non-bio mom who got shafted during a custody dispute, and the letters are to her estranged daughter.

Eric Shanower’s comic about a genie granting a young boy’s wish not to be gay and Ron Koertge’s story about…becoming a dog because his father treats him like a dog? were too weird for me but may appeal to teen fantasy readers. William Sleator’s exploration of love between a Thai boy and a white man was moving if a bit predictable.

That’s ten.  I’ve saved the best for last.  Margo Lanagan is a genius, and her story about a young boy revealing a secret affair between a girl and a robber features gorgeous language and an ending I didn’t see coming.  I had never heard of Jennifer Boylan before, but loved her “The Missing Person,” about a little trans girl borrowing her sister’s clothes and sneaking out to the town parade. “It was the first time in my life I had ever felt the sun on my face as a girl,” says the narrator. “I felt like someone who had been released from jail, like someone who’d spent her whole life in a prison only to be unexpectedly paroled, at the age of fourteen, and set loose upon the world.” When a magician picks her out of the audience to act in the classically superfemme role of his assistant, she’s embarrassed about moving from the sunshine to the spotlight, afraid people can tell she’s not like all the other girls. The story is deepened by a parallel narrative about an exchange student who disappeared long ago. Turns out she stepped on insulation in the back of a closet and fell within the walls of her host house, where no one could hear her cries.

So: two excellent stories, many good ones, some out of place, a couple I wasn’t feeling. That’s pretty standard for a short-story collection.  Still, this one probably deserves the attention it’s getting, thanks to the big names and the efforts to reduce tokenization; there were two comics in the mix, and that oft-ignored T in LGBTQ is fully represented.  Definitely worth buying for your library, but consider getting an extra copy for the adult fiction collection.

Davida Wills Hurwin, November 2009. This superb, hard-hitting novel is based on the true story of a teenage white supremacist and his confrontation with a runaway turning tricks.  Jason’s born-again mother kicks him out when she finds out he’s gay, so he lives on the streets for several years, eating from garbage cans and looking for sugar daddies, but accepting cash from casual encounters to fund his daily survival.  Doug learned to hate black, Latino, and gay people from a young age, fueled by his drug use, his father’s daily violence, and his brother’s shooting at the hands of one of “them.”

When Doug’s world collides with Jason’s outside a doughnut shop, it changes Jason’s life forever, but Doug remains active in the white supremacist world. He marries a woman who swears she’ll smash their children’s heads against a wall if she finds out he, and they, have “one ounce of dark blood.” They teach their children to point out “black niggers” in the grocery store, and live their lives aggressively and defensively until Doug sees the light and begins to repent.

The characters are intensely real, and so is the dialogue.  The book reads like Adam Rapp or Ellen Hopkins right up until the ending, which disappoints. It’s great that Doug realizes he shouldn’t teach his kids to hate, and that Jason finds love and gets off the streets, but everything ties up too neatly.  Rapp or Hopkins would have left more scars on their characters.