Timothy Carter, August 2009.  This hilarious farce tells the story of Stuart, a happily out teen in a small, Canadian, intensely Christian town. Stuart’s parents and peers don’t mind that he’s gay, but all hell breaks loose - sort of literally - when his little brother catches him “going one-player on the joystick” (the funniest of the numerous terms for masturbation that the book introduces).  His parents disown him, his friends ostracize him, and only the local priest has any sympathy.  Turns out that the cause of all this is an angel fallen from heaven because he’s dared to judge onanists harshly; his superpowers give him too much influence over the townspeople. But Stuart has long practiced the art of demon-summoning in order to find out the truth about everything (God doesn’t mind if you masturbate, for example, nor that you’re gay).  He, his makeout buddy Chester, the priest, and the demon set out to recapture their town from the fallen angel’s machinations.  Funny, fast-paced, and brief, this would be great for reluctant readers as well as anyone questioning whether Christianity today really represents what Jesus would have wanted.

John Green and David Levithan, April 2010. This excellent novel is written by Green and Levithan in alternating chapters, each writing from the POV of a different kid named Will Grayson living in the Chicago suburbs.  Will #1 is the kind of kid who tries to stay under the radar.  This strategy is both aided and harmed by his friendship with the gay-gay-gay, fat-fat-fat Tiny Cooper.  Will #1 is trying to decide whether he likes super-indie-girl Jane or not.  Will #2, who runs into #1 in a porn store neither of them planned to enter, is a gay kid in an online relationship that he later discovers is a fake, and he falls pretty hard for Tiny.

Levithan is one of my favorite authors ever ever ever, and Green is excellent as well.  The dialogue is crisp, the characters are creative and real and awesome - even Tiny, and it’s pretty hard to write an original superfag character who loves musicals (it helps that he hates “Over the Rainbow”). The voices Levithan and Green choose for the two Will Graysons aren’t as divergent as I would have liked, so I sometimes got them a little confused, but that is a minor quibble. Highly recommended for all public and high-school libraries.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Jackson Pearce, August 2009.  This light fairytale about falling in love with a jinn, or genie, doesn’t make a lot of sense - but maybe it doesn’t need to.  The story begins after Viola’s boyfriend Lawrence has broken up with her because he’s gay, and so she feels invisible, except when she’s painting.  She apparently wishes (silently) for visibility so very hard that a jinn is assigned to her (we don’t know why).  She calls him “Jinn.”  She has to make three wishes, but she won’t (again we don’t really know why). After the third wish, he can return to his home world of Caliban, where everyone is happy and lives forever. 

For some reason, Jinn falls in love with Viola - this is inexplicable since just a few days before he found her and all humans boring and superficial, and since a jinn has never before fallen for a human - so he’s torn between his old world and his new love. The ending doesn’t make a lot of sense either, but it is, of course, a happy one.

I do like the gay content.  Lawrence is a supporting character, but he’s a positively portrayed gay teen boy.  His and Viola’s school even has a hint of gaytopia: “[R]evealing his sexuality has elevated Lawrence’s status from just a notch or two above mine to that of a full-fledged member of the school’s Royal Family. Every girl wants a gay friend, I guess,” muses Viola early in the book, and it’s true that coming out does seem to have improved Lawrence’s popularity.  Recommend to your tweens who like light fantasy, but older kids will see through the plot holes.

An Na, M.T. Anderson, K.L. Going, Beth Kephart, Chris Lynch, and Jacqueline Woodson, April 2009.   Six stories by six award-winning YA authors, and I can’t decide which I like best.  It’s not Going’s tale of a girl living in her sister’s shadow, and it’s not Kephart’s tearjerker about a dead best friend, although both of these would have shone on their own.  It’s definitely not Lynch’s contribution about a young man who takes over his father’s pawnshop, the only story to fall flat, mostly because the format doesn’t give us enough time to get to know the narrator.  No, it’s one of the other three.  An writes harshly and poetically about a young woman abandoned by her baby’s father and seeking money for sex, and we think we know why until the end.  Woodson invites us into the mind of a troubled dancer in the black gay ballet scene, a corner of the world I never knew existed.  I think that one might be my favorite, partly because Anderson’s story just makes me feel stupid. Am I supposed to understand whether this scripted dialogue really takes place between two high school seniors — and if it does, the girl is out of her mind — or is it really an elderly couple but one is…really dead?  Just a projection and some memories?  Or am I the crazy one?

K.L. Going, April 2009.  Liam is the son of a supermodel, with impeccable fashion sense and a knack for getting hot girls.  In other words, he’s one of the cool kids. But when his conservative banker father kicks him out for one too many misbehaviors of the frat boy variety - drunken sex, school pranks, and the like - he decides to be intentionally uncool.  He goes to live with “Aunt Pete,” his father’s brother, who lives in a trailer and plays in a band. Pete is gay and likes makeup and fashion, and praises the drag side of glam rock: “Art, glamour, theater…It’s not so different from modeling, really. You get onstage and strike a pose. Plus, I feel good when I dress up, and men don’t usually get to experience that. But why shouldn’t we?”

Liam studies the nerds at his new school in order to figure out what to do, and the cool kids to figure out what not to do.  Predictably, this backfires, as Liam’s lame behaviors make the cheerleaders dig him more than ever, and he learns what the rest of us already knew: “I suddenly realize something about being popular. I didn’t get it before, but now it clicks. When you’re popular, people give you the benefit of the doubt. Here I am sitting in Jen’s car, and no one cares that I’m wearing one of the all-time stupidest outfits.”

The outcome may be obvious (although, no, Liam isn’t gay), but the book is a gem, sneaking musical and fashion commentary into a gaytopic reversal of the ugly duckling-into-swan story. Highly recommended.