An inspiring, empowering chronicle of self-discovery and fearless pride sure to entertain and inform both cisgender and...
Pseudonymous Singapore-based author Tor (High Noon, 2015, etc.) charts the coming-of-age of a resilient teenager confronting issues of gender.
John Bird is an effeminate North Carolina high schooler who’s bullied by fellow students who call him “Ladybird.” However, he’s swiftly befriended by a striking, indigo-eyed transfer student named Aureus Conner. John isn’t drawn to her with romantic intentions but with emulative ones; his own secret pleasure lies hidden in his bedroom in a box containing girl’s blouses and jewelry. His older brother Devon tries to help him clarify his sexual proclivities by supplying him with various types of pornography, but it only fuels his confusion and shame. As his friendship with the spirited Aureus deepens into their college years, John’s comfort with his sexual identity grows despite sporadic confrontations with former high school bully J.P., who winds up at the same university. His admiration of titillating artwork featuring women, combined with his continued admiration for Aureus’ physical beauty, furthers his burgeoning desire to explore his feminine side despite a few unexpected setbacks. A Halloween party where he and Aureus both cross-dress and a stroll around campus in women’s clothing solidifies his suspicion that being a woman makes him the happiest and the truest to himself even if it briefly challenges Aureus’ previously hidden religious beliefs. This last theme may be the only part of this thoughtful narrative that Tor fails to deeply explore. This affecting, meandering novel is flush with dialogue, but its true engine is its characterizations. Both of the quirky, endearing, relatable outcasts will grab readers’ attention from the first page due to their unique struggles to establish their own identities within a critical, conformist society. The power of their unconditional, complex relationship and the authenticity and seriousness of John’s gender-transformative journey are inspiring and thought-provoking. Tor’s book is sure to ignite galvanizing conversation as it adds to the growing library of transgender-themed YA titles.
An inspiring, empowering chronicle of self-discovery and fearless pride sure to entertain and inform both cisgender and transgender readers.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5078-3680-4
Page Count: 276
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 25, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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