An entertaining and perceptive YA take on the predicament of gay adolescence.
A gay teenager tries to break into a new high school and Hollywood while firming up his identity amid the uproar of the 1960s in this coming-of-age novel.
Sixteen-year-old Haskell Hodge loves acting (he has an iconic cereal commercial under his belt), playing piano (his Liberace parody brings the house down), and living in the bustling Manhattan of 1966. But when his divorced mom decamps to Europe with her lover, he gets dumped in Los Angeles to live with his aunt, uncle, and bratty cousin. His gangly, nerdy presence and fondness for show tunes soon make him the target of gay bashing by Lucky Miller, the handsome, dumb swimming champion at Encino High School, who refers to him as Judy Garland. Standard-issue bullying ensues—Haskell gets roughed up in hallways and urinated on in the showers. Then he is befriended by classmate Henry Stoneman, a dreamboat possessed of “near-perfect…handsomeness,” a blossoming acting career, a wonderful interpretive touch with Chopin, fluency in four languages, and serious martial arts prowess that he imparts to Haskell in bare-chested wrestling sessions that leave the latter flustered and aroused. Henry’s feelings remain a mystery, but under his tutelage, Haskell is soon ready to stand up to Lucky. Unfortunately, when Henry and Haskell try out for roles in a movie being produced by the latter’s estranged dad, rivalry strains their friendship. And Hollywood’s insistence that gay actors remain barricaded in the closet starts to shadow Haskell’s prospects. Seigel’s (The Mouth Trap, 2007) hectic yarn deals with serious themes of maturation and belonging in a lighthearted vein that grows somewhat darker as the story proceeds. There is angst but not much rebellion in the YA novel, which is set in a largely Jewish, middle-class milieu where adults dispense good advice and empathy and the Vietnam-era counterculture is just background noise on TV news. The author draws vibrant, if sometimes cartoonish, characters, like Delia Jacobson, a theater-mad student who speaks in pig Latin. In addition, his prose is brisk and funny, its tone set by Haskell’s comic kvetching and hand-wringing. (“I might become radioactive and turn into one of those green, hairy creatures I read about in my comic books,” he frets after reading about toxic waste in the San Fernando Valley.) Haskell’s endless neurotic uncertainty over who to be and what to do will captivate readers.
An entertaining and perceptive YA take on the predicament of gay adolescence.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947392-67-0
Page Count: 329
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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