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4.22 AVERAGE
4.22 AVERAGE
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I too went to quaker school and didn’t understand that I could be trans and got into physical fights with boys (and girls) and had strange and horrible gay friendships that haunt me to this day. Oh god, fuck. Very ill about this.
3.5 rounded up. i liked it! i'm about a decade younger than these characters but man did this book hit home anyway. i, too, was an ambiguously closeted queer drama club kid whose friend group WROTE FANFICTION ABOUT ONE ANOTHER AND PUBLISHED IT ON A PRIVATE BLOG (the blog was password protected ((and the password was a homophobic slur)) and still exists). the fanfiction in this book *chef's kiss* perfect and so accurate. i especially loved fay's deeply confusing queer identity, like it's obvious from an outside perspective that she is a gay trans man but i really loved all the compounding factors that made her feel like a fraud and a pretender and like she was appropriating queer culture for her weird kink. i also really liked the way the racist storyline was laid out, very subtle and tender. a book very much about living in the neoliberal northeast and how bigotries unfold in incredibly understated ways and give you brain damage because at the same time you're going "well at least i'm not getting slurs hurled at me or getting beaten down" meanwhile you're being socially ostracized from your peers for being too dykey. i really liked all the characters, i thought they were very realistic portrayals of exactly the type of people they are representing, i wanted to hit theo in the face so bad in a way that brought me back to high school lol. i loved the way fay and nell's friendship ended, it felt very very real. just a really engaging and relatable book :)
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
So far outside my “normal” read but I absolutely enjoyed my time with this book and these characters. I don’t think this book would be for everyone but I felt heavily invested in seeing how this played out as I truly was not sure of the destination the entire time. This book made me feel both completely comforted and wildly uncomfortable at the same time- just like my own high school experience where it’s such a push and pull that changes by the week, day, class period, minute, etc. An incredible read! (There are many very graphic details of different traumas in this book. Albeit written in a nonchalant way, you may want to look up TW before starting)
Before I get to the rest of the review, I want to say that this is one of the best examples of multiple narrators that I have ever read. I could tell without looking at the heading which character (or combined characters) was narrating any given chapter. This is incredibly important to me, because why else have more than one narrator if you're going to have them write in the same voice. So it practically gets 5 stars on that alone. But moving on...
For most (probably all) of the book, I had no solid idea where it was going, but that theoretical destination really didn't matter to me because I was enjoying the journey so much. There is something frenetic, misguided, misunderstood, jumbled, self-centered, impulsive, and cruel about being a teenager that this book just absolutely NAILS. At one point I was mentally remarking to myself how little time was passing in the book while occupying so many pages and so much story, and it occurred to me that that is exactly how high school felt. Everything was life and death (while also feeling meaningless and simply fodder for jokes and other antics), and my memories are crammed into their timelines with a pace that the book captures perfectly.
It is also a very funny book through out.
I felt a weird sense of absolution while reading Idlewild, like all the inexplicable things I did in high school, the little moments or details that make me feel vaguely (and sometimes acutely) ashamed when I let myself look back, are actually pretty normal. Which they probably are! But I guess there are more small things that I feel weird about in hindsight than I realized. But these characters felt so real that I wound up feeling a kind of comfort and self-forgiveness toward my teen self, like oh yeah I guess all teens are kinda fucked up, and the fact I was dumb in ways I can't even understand myself is actually ok. My teen self who I've always loathed and wished to just forget is worthy of love, too. I'm probably not explaining it very well, but somehow the book made me look at my past self in a different light, one that takes into account that aforementioned frenetic, bored, barely-begun process of self discovery, and creates space for understanding and forgiveness.
I didn't go to a quaker school, I didn't live in NYC, and I graduated high school five years before the characters did, but in some ways the story felt like it could have been written about me or any of my friends. Maybe it's because I'm gay and genderqueer (and that I didn't realize the latter until almost 30) that so much resonated with me, but I feel like anyone who was a teen during that same general era who didn't perfectly fit in would feel a certain level of recognition and appreciation for these characters and their stories. I don't know what it would be like to read it as someone else, obviously, like someone straight, or born more recently, but I think it would still be a compelling read.
There's also something super interesting about the ways we think about people or what people mean to us, without them ever knowing, and this book does a wonderful job capturing that.
For most (probably all) of the book, I had no solid idea where it was going, but that theoretical destination really didn't matter to me because I was enjoying the journey so much. There is something frenetic, misguided, misunderstood, jumbled, self-centered, impulsive, and cruel about being a teenager that this book just absolutely NAILS. At one point I was mentally remarking to myself how little time was passing in the book while occupying so many pages and so much story, and it occurred to me that that is exactly how high school felt. Everything was life and death (while also feeling meaningless and simply fodder for jokes and other antics), and my memories are crammed into their timelines with a pace that the book captures perfectly.
It is also a very funny book through out.
I felt a weird sense of absolution while reading Idlewild, like all the inexplicable things I did in high school, the little moments or details that make me feel vaguely (and sometimes acutely) ashamed when I let myself look back, are actually pretty normal. Which they probably are! But I guess there are more small things that I feel weird about in hindsight than I realized. But these characters felt so real that I wound up feeling a kind of comfort and self-forgiveness toward my teen self, like oh yeah I guess all teens are kinda fucked up, and the fact I was dumb in ways I can't even understand myself is actually ok. My teen self who I've always loathed and wished to just forget is worthy of love, too. I'm probably not explaining it very well, but somehow the book made me look at my past self in a different light, one that takes into account that aforementioned frenetic, bored, barely-begun process of self discovery, and creates space for understanding and forgiveness.
I didn't go to a quaker school, I didn't live in NYC, and I graduated high school five years before the characters did, but in some ways the story felt like it could have been written about me or any of my friends. Maybe it's because I'm gay and genderqueer (and that I didn't realize the latter until almost 30) that so much resonated with me, but I feel like anyone who was a teen during that same general era who didn't perfectly fit in would feel a certain level of recognition and appreciation for these characters and their stories. I don't know what it would be like to read it as someone else, obviously, like someone straight, or born more recently, but I think it would still be a compelling read.
There's also something super interesting about the ways we think about people or what people mean to us, without them ever knowing, and this book does a wonderful job capturing that.
emotional
reflective
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This book cracked me open. The entire page of I WANT TO BE A FAGGOT is haunting me
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
funny
medium-paced