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A review by eemilycolleen
Idlewild by James Frankie Thomas
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
WHEWWWWWW. what to even say. feverish, devastating, maddening, and so beautiful. truly the best book I've read in ages. I read it in one sitting today while absolutely skiving off work, and it was worth it. it's about new york and growing up and desire and transness and fanfiction and love love love, and the fallibility of memory and those memories' continued importance regardless of their inaccuracy or incompleteness. I loved every moment.
the passages I found myself dog-earing largely (unsurprisingly) focus on fay's nebulous, dangerous relationship with queerness, which thomas lays out over and over again, sometimes in very straightforward ways; but the most affecting, I thought, was fay's description of the sublimated theo fic blowjob, and nell's heartbreaking, arms-wide-open response. these are two people who loved each other, deeply, wholly, cruelly; and sometimes love is not enough, or it is enough but things still end, anyway. "he could hardly breathe. tears began to stream down his face. and even still he wanted more of him inside him. he wanted to swallow him whole, he wanted him to fill him up entirely until nothing of himself remained. little did theo know that tears were in christopher's eyes too. christopher was going to miss theo so much."
the reveal late in the game that nell and fay remember things differently killed me because it's so obvious, right, of course these are imprecise memories, moments refracted back through the smudged lens of each person's own bias, and yet it's that imprecision that equally hurts and matters so much. "you wouldn't fit in there anyway. it's all lesbians / VS. / you're not gay, so..." brutal. you can love someone so much you want to become them entirely, and still you will never know them fully, and still you will lose them, and STILL you will miss them: still, it will be three o'clock in the morning in the future, and you will reach for them in the dark. the final paragraph in fay's point of view eviscerated me. it's a sad ending, I can see that, except that I don't FEEL that: because we are still here, reaching out in the dark, and maybe one day we will see each other again. the chance is still there. the love is still there.
quotes because my GOD! THE WRITING!
- What we mean to say, but what Ms. Spider is not equipped to understand, is that Iago is gay in the way that all the best fictional murderers are gay—Norman Bates, Tom Ripley, the titular Third Man—and he was the original. Iago is gay like a black leather whip, like Paris in the 1920s, like calling non-food things delicious. Iago is gay like cold eyes and bony hips, like a pearl handled pistol tucked in one’s suit pocket, like delicate fingers that could play a Chopin prelude or crush a throat with equal grace. Iago is gay in the way that we the F&N unit aspire to be gay, but it’s harder for girls.
- How vividly I could visualize what I wanted my Iago to look like! How clearly I saw his wickedness externalized as telltale sissy traits that set him apart from everyone else: the effete flicks of the wrist, the lightly sibilant pronunciation, the fine dark clothing that clung suggestively to narrow hips. Eyeliner, perhaps. The image set my heart racing with joyful narcissism, a full-body epiphany that this was it—with “it” existing simultaneously as “the physical manifestation of what I like best about myself” and “that which I most wish to fuck.”
- What did he mean? I couldn’t ask directly, couldn’t puncture the soap bubble of double entendre in which we were floating. This was flirting, I suppose, in the sense that it was an escalating and erotically charged exchange of verbal teasing that served as an indirect acknowledgement of an attraction that felt otherwise unspeakable. But it was a delicate balance we had to strike. A single false move—by which I mean a heterosexual move, on either of our parts—would have broken the spell. The flirtation was asymptotic, the attraction displaced: my object of desire was not Theo himself, but the abstract idea of Theo being gay. That was what I wanted. That was what was causing my heart to flutter in my chest with a mothlike fragility that it had heretofore exhibited only in response to the image of two dudes doing it—never, until now, in response to another living person.
- Identification in the wild: He saw me. He understood me. He knew me.
- I have no memory of her face in that moment. Perhaps I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. More likely I looked at her and failed to see her.
- I believe that for a year and a half, Nell loved me more than anyone else ever has, ever will, or ever should. This is a belief I dare not subject to reality testing. I want to remain the girl Nell loved. And so I didn’t reveal myself. But now I wish I had. It’s three o’clock in the morning and I am still drinking alone in the dark and thinking of Nell. I wonder what would have happened had I called out Nell! Hey, Nell! and crossed the street to greet her. I imagine extending my hand and introducing myself, as if for the first time. I imagine saying that I’d like to get to know her. That we have something in common, though we’re not exactly the same.
- Here’s the thing: I’ve never forgotten how it felt to love Fay. For a year and a half, my brain merged into hers until I had no idea where she ended and I began. I know if I tried to explain that to anyone, it would sound scary. Like I lost myself to her. At the time, though, it felt like just the opposite. I knew exactly who I was. I was Fay’s best friend. We loved theater and gay shit and ourselves. We went to Idlewild.
the passages I found myself dog-earing largely (unsurprisingly) focus on fay's nebulous, dangerous relationship with queerness, which thomas lays out over and over again, sometimes in very straightforward ways; but the most affecting, I thought, was fay's description of the sublimated theo fic blowjob, and nell's heartbreaking, arms-wide-open response. these are two people who loved each other, deeply, wholly, cruelly; and sometimes love is not enough, or it is enough but things still end, anyway. "he could hardly breathe. tears began to stream down his face. and even still he wanted more of him inside him. he wanted to swallow him whole, he wanted him to fill him up entirely until nothing of himself remained. little did theo know that tears were in christopher's eyes too. christopher was going to miss theo so much."
the reveal late in the game that nell and fay remember things differently killed me because it's so obvious, right, of course these are imprecise memories, moments refracted back through the smudged lens of each person's own bias, and yet it's that imprecision that equally hurts and matters so much. "you wouldn't fit in there anyway. it's all lesbians / VS. / you're not gay, so..." brutal. you can love someone so much you want to become them entirely, and still you will never know them fully, and still you will lose them, and STILL you will miss them: still, it will be three o'clock in the morning in the future, and you will reach for them in the dark. the final paragraph in fay's point of view eviscerated me. it's a sad ending, I can see that, except that I don't FEEL that: because we are still here, reaching out in the dark, and maybe one day we will see each other again. the chance is still there. the love is still there.
quotes because my GOD! THE WRITING!
- What we mean to say, but what Ms. Spider is not equipped to understand, is that Iago is gay in the way that all the best fictional murderers are gay—Norman Bates, Tom Ripley, the titular Third Man—and he was the original. Iago is gay like a black leather whip, like Paris in the 1920s, like calling non-food things delicious. Iago is gay like cold eyes and bony hips, like a pearl handled pistol tucked in one’s suit pocket, like delicate fingers that could play a Chopin prelude or crush a throat with equal grace. Iago is gay in the way that we the F&N unit aspire to be gay, but it’s harder for girls.
- How vividly I could visualize what I wanted my Iago to look like! How clearly I saw his wickedness externalized as telltale sissy traits that set him apart from everyone else: the effete flicks of the wrist, the lightly sibilant pronunciation, the fine dark clothing that clung suggestively to narrow hips. Eyeliner, perhaps. The image set my heart racing with joyful narcissism, a full-body epiphany that this was it—with “it” existing simultaneously as “the physical manifestation of what I like best about myself” and “that which I most wish to fuck.”
- What did he mean? I couldn’t ask directly, couldn’t puncture the soap bubble of double entendre in which we were floating. This was flirting, I suppose, in the sense that it was an escalating and erotically charged exchange of verbal teasing that served as an indirect acknowledgement of an attraction that felt otherwise unspeakable. But it was a delicate balance we had to strike. A single false move—by which I mean a heterosexual move, on either of our parts—would have broken the spell. The flirtation was asymptotic, the attraction displaced: my object of desire was not Theo himself, but the abstract idea of Theo being gay. That was what I wanted. That was what was causing my heart to flutter in my chest with a mothlike fragility that it had heretofore exhibited only in response to the image of two dudes doing it—never, until now, in response to another living person.
- Identification in the wild: He saw me. He understood me. He knew me.
- I have no memory of her face in that moment. Perhaps I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. More likely I looked at her and failed to see her.
- I believe that for a year and a half, Nell loved me more than anyone else ever has, ever will, or ever should. This is a belief I dare not subject to reality testing. I want to remain the girl Nell loved. And so I didn’t reveal myself. But now I wish I had. It’s three o’clock in the morning and I am still drinking alone in the dark and thinking of Nell. I wonder what would have happened had I called out Nell! Hey, Nell! and crossed the street to greet her. I imagine extending my hand and introducing myself, as if for the first time. I imagine saying that I’d like to get to know her. That we have something in common, though we’re not exactly the same.
- Here’s the thing: I’ve never forgotten how it felt to love Fay. For a year and a half, my brain merged into hers until I had no idea where she ended and I began. I know if I tried to explain that to anyone, it would sound scary. Like I lost myself to her. At the time, though, it felt like just the opposite. I knew exactly who I was. I was Fay’s best friend. We loved theater and gay shit and ourselves. We went to Idlewild.