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THE BOOK OF DAVID by Anonymous

THE BOOK OF DAVID

by Anonymous

Pub Date: June 3rd, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4424-8986-8
Publisher: Simon Pulse/Simon & Schuster

Texas high school senior and quarterback David has a secret no one can discover.

Forced by his English teacher to keep a journal in which he writes for 10 minutes, three times a week, David chronicles his innermost secret: his attraction to men. Over the course of a semester, he falls for Jon, the new kid from Chicago, who’s a great singer and star of the swim team. He also writes of his relationship with Monica, his cheerleader girlfriend, who has a cool gay uncle who was also a football star. But most painful are his crumbling relationships with his beer-loving, homophobic father and his clingy (though straight) best friend, Tyler, who was up for QB until he was injured. Can David navigate this minefield and hang on to his scholarship offer from USC? Straining the conceit of the journal from the outset, this ill-conceived title “in the tradition of Go Ask Alice” equates being gay with being an alcoholic, a drug addict and an anorexic in its packaging alone. When gay teens need an example of pride, an “Anonymous” byline is a giant leap backward; and with a penultimate paragraph concluding “I feel like I don’t have anything to hide,” that “Anonymous” is ironic to a fault.

Ten years (or more) ago this might have been an important book; but even with its positive close, today it is an embarrassment.

(Fiction. 14-17)