NAOMI AND ELY’S NO KISS LIST

Working in multiple voices, each as clear and as sharp as an iMix, Cohn and Levithan return to tell the story of Naomi and Ely, who have lived across the hall from each other in the same Greenwich Village apartment house since childhood, and are now both at NYU. Naomi is straight, beautiful, bitchy and deeply hurting (her mom has taken to anti-depressants and bed since her dad left after an affair with one of Ely’s moms). They are inseparable friends until Ely, pretty and witty, breaks the no-kiss rule and falls for Naomi’s sort-of boyfriend (Bruce the Second), who falls back. Not only are there two Bruces, but there are two Robins, too, identified by gender icons. There are a lot of rebus-like icons in use in the text, a certain amount of contemporary language, a great deal of longing (but no sex) and kissing. Perhaps the best scene is the male Robin’s un-paragraphed stream-of-consciousness guy monologue on how he wants the female Robin to want him back. A brilliant tour-de-force—funny, sweet, sly and sexy. (Fiction. YA)