“Boy Meets Boy” by David Levithan
I am one of those people who has piles of stuff and papers on most horizontal surfaces in the house. I inherited this tendency from my mother; I do not know which DNA strand it resides on. I used to be one of those people who, when asked for such-and-such random item, could picture it in my mind’s eye, go to the correct pile, and within moments, produce the desired item. Alas, no longer. More and more, I go to find something and simply can’t. I search through multiple piles with no success. This happened today when I went to look for the library copy of Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan, recommended to me as a good teen romance by my friend C. Thus, there is not a quote from this entertaining books to put right here:
It is a good teen romance, one between Paul and new-guy Noah. They meet in a bookstore that’s having a concert and dance, so right away we know we’re in some kind of gay-friendly alternate universe, in a New Jersey suburb of NYC. And the romance follows the usual trajectory: Boy meets boy in a cute manner, then loses boy, then gets boy back. Other people’s romances orbit around them and comic relief frequently intervenes in the person of Infinite Darlene, fka Daryl, who is both the star quarterback and the homecoming queen. But it’s not all sunshine and flowers. Paul’s friend Joni is dating a new guy the old friends don’t like, and Tony’s gay-unfriendly parents are slowly crushing his spirit.
This is a short, lovely book, though I enjoyed it more at the beginning, when it focused on the open nature of the fictional school, than towards the end, when things played out mostly predictably. This book reminded me fondly of Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat books, in how magical and wonderful and weird yet true it was. Highly recommended.