Levithan, David. Boy Meets Boy

Why on earth did it take me so long to read this book--when (as some of you will suspect) it sounds exactly like the kind of thing I ought to like, even if it doesn't have any ninjas in it?

Well, maybe it's because I was a little suspicious. So many YA novels are stultifying tomes of Let's Talk About This Important Issue, and if there was one thing I'm usually not in the mood for, it's "OHMYGOD I'M GAY. TEH ANGST. ANGST ANGST ANGST PREACHINESS." ...Okay, I should have expected better from David Levithan. And he does something surprising and perfect: he sidesteps (nearly) all issues of politics and social commentary by setting the novel in the gayest, most liberal corner of suburban Utopia, a train ride away from Manhattan. It acknowledges, briefly, right up-front, that it is a better world than the one we actually live in, and moves on; we can all use a little sojourn in a better world.

The Old Queen sits at his bench, reminiscing about Broadway in the 1920s. Two benches away, the Young Punk shouts loudly about Sid and Nancy and the birth of revolt. They rarely find themselves without a willing audience, but when the foot traffic slows, the Old Queen and the Young Punk sit together and share memories of events that happened long before they were born. We continue to tour through the town, and everything is new to him: the I Scream Parlor, which shows horror movies as you wait for your double dip; the elementary school playground, where I used to tell the jungle gym all my secrets; the Pink Floyd shrine in our local barber's backyard.

Levithan's utopic vision, in The Realm of Possibility, bugged me just a little; less so here, maybe because I know what to expect, maybe because it's honest and straightforward about where it's coming from, maybe because it's not a wholly perfect world, and people are people. Specifically, teenagers are teenagers, in their ability to hold petty grudges, to love stupidly, to kiss their ex-boyfriends.

This is a romance, first of all, the story of Paul and Noah; and it is the story of their knot of friends, Infinite Darlene, the homecoming queen and star quarterback, folkie girl Joni, Paul's ex-boyfriend Kyle, and Tony, the one who sticks out because his parents are strict and religious, and he doesn't get to share in how easy everyone else has it.

Except, of course, that they don't have it easy. Like any romantic comedy, you've got misunderstandings (thank goodness, NOT the kind of misunderstandings that only continue because both people involved are blithering idiots) and little tragedies and problems that look absolutely unsolvable; and you've got the certainty that somehow everything will be okay in the end.

Which makes this book sound like any of an infinite number of YA romantic comedies, only singled out because of it's gay protagonist, and that is far from being the case. Levithan writes like silk. Sweet and smooth and shiny. And he captures something so genuine and so real about young first love that... I think that's the other reason I hadn't read it before now. The same things that make me sigh appreciatively now would've made me twitchy and pained last year, and there are times when real can be too real.

This is a wonderful book.