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.

Jean Hegland, 1996.  Eva and Nell, sisters in their late teens, have ambitions - Eva wants to be a professional ballet dancer and Nell has been pining for Harvard since she was a child.  But an unnamed, vague disaster strikes, and their plans evaporate as they lose access to electricity, water, gasoline, and food.  The story starts out strong, describing the sisters’ efforts to survive and the dangers they face as two isolated young girls, but then it takes some bizarre turns.  First, the sisters start having sex with each other; then, when Eva has a baby following a rape, both sisters begin lactating. They fight over the baby, giving him two different names, and Nell runs away from home, but Eva comes to find her and then, it seems, they live happily ever after. 

The survival portion of the story is quite well done, but the magical realism - or is it just magic? - and the incest twist are too jarring to be believable. I can’t really recommend this one even to survival-story fanatics because they will be disappointed in the end.

Justine Larbalestier, September 2009.  Micah is a compulsive liar, which she admits right away, so how can we believe anything she says? She swears she will tell the truth in the book, though, and she promises this in a very believable way - because she’s such a practiced liar. 

Micah’s secret boyfriend, Zach, has been savagely murdered, and she’s one of the suspects. She dances around most issues, but is clear up front about this one: she insists she did not kill Zach.  Throughout the book, she admits she’s told us a variety of lies along the way - she brings a younger brother into and out of existence a few times, for example - but she never wavers from her position that she did not kill Zach. 

I can’t reveal much more of the plot without giving away major spoilers. Suffice it to say that in the middle of this seemingly realistic teen mystery, a supernatural element is thrown in….or is it?  Is Micah lying about that too?  What about this family illness she claims to have?  Is it real or supernatural or completely fake?  What kind of gender and sexuality issues does Micah have?  Maybe none, or maybe that’s actually 100% of her problem, and the whole “family illness” is just a lie or a metaphor or a plot device to talk about gender? 

The author herself states there are at least two ways to interpret the end of the book and that she left the ambiguity in on purpose.  No matter what you think about Micah’s true nature or what her real problems are, this book will frighten and intrigue teen and adult readers alike. Highly recommended.

Amy Reed, October 2009.  This riveting story of a thirteen-year-old girl making harrowing decisions has been compared to Go Ask Alice, but it reminds me more of Blake Nelson’s 1994 Girl.  Both books are narrated by teenagers breaking out of their suburban shells and taking risks involving drugs, sex, and self-discovery, but while Girl ends happily with Andrea going off to college as a well-informed adult who’s gotten her experimenting over early, Beautiful’s ending is not so tidy.

It doesn’t help that Cassie is only thirteen or that she’s beautiful: almond eyes and a dancer’s body, her mom tells her. She’s so naive when she’s offered her first hit of acid or her first French kiss that she doesn’t even know saying no is an option. Plus, sex and drugs remove her from the sordid reality of her bickering parents, alcoholic mother, and seriously abused friend Sarah, and she needs that. When Cassie snorts her first line of coke, “the lights suddenly seem brighter and the bed is softer and everyone’s more beautiful, and my body is lighter and stronger and sexier and more awake, and the hangover’s gone and the music is beautiful and everything is perfect.”

Nelson’s book is told in a similar breathless fashion, but his protagonist is more self-aware - too self-conscious, even, in a flustered teenage way. Reed’s Cassie has no self-awareness at all.  She responds to what makes her feel good and ignores everything else. In the end, she falls in something like love with Sarah, whose body doesn’t disgust and bore her like boys’ bodies do. Then Sarah dies, tragically and alone, and Cassie is left to begin again. She’s so young that she might have a chance, or she’s so young she’s damaged forever, but probably both.

Highly recommended for public and high-school libraries, for fans of Ellen Hopkins and Adam Rapp, and for anyone else who - like I did - read the hell out of a copy of Girl and then mailed it to Kathleen Hanna as a gift. Ahem.

Robin Stevenson, April 2009. Dante was baptized Emily, but she doesn’t feel that the pretty, girly, old-fashioned name suits her now. Her fascination with Dante’s circles of hell leads her to choose his first name for her own, but it’s hard to get her family and friends to remember not to call her Emily.

Dante’s not very happy; she has a hard time making close friends, but doesn’t want to bring her circle of casual stoner acquaintances any closer. Her best friend/closeted girlfriend Beth moved away a few months ago and won’t respond to her emails. Her English teacher taunts her, her father is distant, and her mom really doesn’t understand - she wants Dante to attend a social-skills support group for teenage girls.

Dante reluctantly attends the first meeting and is startled to see Parker, a girl she knows as a local anti-school activist who’s dropped out and lives with her boyfriend.  Dante starts spending more and more time with Parker, at first admiring how she doesn’t take crap from anyone, then trying to protect her when it turns out she does, in fact, take quite a lot of crap from her boyfriend - including physical abuse.  Their friend Leo has a huge crush on Dante, but Dante has a huge crush on Parker, and she still can’t stop thinking about Beth.

The action climaxes when the four decide to burn down their school.  Parker and Dante try to talk the boys out of it, but to no avail, and the school burns to the ground. The book winds up a little too neatly; Dante confesses everything to her parents, realizes Parker is too selfish and manipulative to be a close friend, and decides to power through life on her own, with just the stars for inspiration. The gay content is great - Dante is semi-closeted, but the book’s not about that - it’s about a girl who likes girls but, at the moment, has bigger problems.

Albert Borris, July 2009. Owen, Audrey, Jin-Ae and Frank meet online in a chat room about suicide. They form a club of sorts - the Suicide Dogs - and decide to meet up for a tour of famous American gravesites and then end it all in Death Valley.  Owen, the narrator, is quiet and nerdy, with an encyclopedic knowledge about celebrity suicides.  Audrey is young and attention-seeking with a shaved head and a passion for Kurt Cobain.  Jin-Ae is a closeted lesbian who cuts herself to stifle her fears of telling her parents she’s gay.  Frank wants desperately to be an athlete but is skinny and clumsy and probably an alcoholic. The road-trip narrative is interspersed with chat room transcripts from before the group met in person, and with lists they make about their trip and their mission: Top Ten Things to Remember about NYC, Top Ten Places to Visit that Aren’t Graves, Top Ten Bizarre Ways to Kill Yourself.

Over the duration of the cross-country trip, there are several random hookups - including Jin-Ae and Frank, oddly enough - and a lot of secrets revealed.  Owen witnessed his brother’s death and blames himself. Audrey never really tried to kill herself at all. And Frank has hidden a loaded gun under the front seat of the car.

Crash Into Me starts off slowly - maybe too slowly - but picks up quickly as the characters’ hidden motivations are revealed and as both sexual and emotional tension build from the group’s containment in a car for weeks.  The foursome adds more and more side trips to their vacation until we suspect they’re never going to make it to Death Valley at all.  The book ends just before they arrive, and Owen makes a final list: My Top Ten Reasons to Live.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz, September 2009. This powerful first-person narrative is set in a rehab center, where eighteen-year-old Zach has woken up with no memories of how he got there. It’s clear that he and his father are alcoholics and that his mother and brother are abusive, but that doesn’t shed a lot of light on the recent chain of events that led to his institutionalization.  The truth comes out over the course of Zach’s stay, thanks to his father-figure roommate and his caring therapist.

The book has the potential to be just another tale of rehab and redemption, but due to Sáenz’s incredible talent, it surpasses expectations to become the best YA novel I’ve read this year. Recovery does not come easy for Zach; he cries and screams and sweats out all of his pain and desire, and it rings so true that I found myself clenching the cover and almost tearing the pages as I turned them.  I gasped and had real tears of joy in my eyes on page 234.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the book is its queer content.  We don’t know whether Zach is gay; he turns down a kiss from a boy, but later promises he will kiss him, but then says it might just be a thank-you.  Zach never mentions a girlfriend or boyfriend or any sexual behavior other than abuse by his mother.  Although he is in a mixed-sex rehab, everyone he connects with is male; on the other hand, he seems to relate to them as ersatz family rather than as romantic partners. The ambiguity surrounding Zach’s sexuality can be read as gaytopic in the sense that it doesn’t seem to matter to him; it’s not part of his confusion or his rehabilitation. That’s why this post has the “gaytopia” tag when the rest of the story is anything but lighthearted.