I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth The Trip.: 40th Anniversary Edition by John Donovan
Recommended.

There’s no doubt that John Donovan’s 1969 young adult novel, I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip is historically significant—charmingly pitched by the author to Harper & Row editor Ursula Nordstrom as a “buddy love” novel, I’ll Get There . . . was, in fact, the first teen novel to include “gay” content. In an era when homosexuality was still considered a mental disorder, thirteen-year-old protagonist Davy kisses another boy and then grapples with the fall-out. Though most of the boy-kissing takes place off-screen (“We only made out once!” Davy exclaims), this was nevertheless groundbreaking for the time.

Modern discussions of the novel, such as the one here, in the comments of the Booksmugglers blog, often focus on whether or not Donovan’s book goes far enough in promoting a message of queer acceptance to modern teenagers. Commenter Angie writes:

The question I *am* asking: if you only have $15 to spend on a teen book for your library and you want one that has queer content in it should you buy Boy Meets Boy or Donovan’s book? Of course, this is a question each librarian must answer for their own community, but I personally can’t think of a single thing that would recommend Donovan’s title to contemporary teen readers over Levithan’s. This decision is a reality for many small libraries or for libraries struggling with smaller budgets. The question now for these budgets and these librarians is not “Should I get a book with queer content?” but “Which book with queer content should I get?”

I can’t help but feeling that questions like these—and the intense focus on I’ll Get There . . .‘s status as a groundbreaking “issues” book—almost entirely miss the point.

Because, in fact, the “queering around” (as Davy refers to it) does not occur until almost two thirds into the narrative, and it’s really a very small—though important—part of Davy’s journey. The novel opens with Davy’s grandmother’s funeral. He and his dog Fred have lived with his grandmother (“a good old guy” who respects both Davy’s space and his agency) since he was a small child, but now that she’s gone he’ll be shipped off to the claustrophobic Manhattan apartment owned by his alcoholic mother.

Davy’s mother is an inconstant emotional abuser. She downs bourbon and kvetches about how she’s sacrificed her life for her child, despite the fact that she hasn’t had to inconvenience herself with his presence for longer than a weekend in eight years. She shows him off to her tippling friends, and grills Davy for information about the weekend meals he shares with his father and his father’s new wife, conversations which inevitable end disastrously:

“She’s big around the middle, don’t you think?” Mother says.

“Who?”

“Stephanie, of course. She’s always seemed rather bovine to me, don’t you agree?”

I ask her what she means by bovine, and she says she means that Stephanie looks like a big cow. Would I agree? I don’t say anything.

Through all of these uncomfortable, painful, accurate scenes, and amidst a cast of characters vivid enough that they might as well be real, the star is Davy. It feels tempting (if easy) to describe him as little more than a young Holden Caulfield. His observations about his life and his world are equally sharp, right down to the little details, and they’re all wryly communicated in slang-heavy vernacular. But Holden’s already begun the process of growing up—the process, perhaps, of becoming a phony. Davy is no phony. At thirteen, he still occupies the hopeful fantasy land of childhood. Unaware of how completely (if sweetly) naïve he is, he asks his relatives if he can just continue to live in his grandmother’s house alone after her death, and carries on conversations with taxidermied coyotes at the Museum of Natural History. He’s young enough that his dog can still genuinely be his best friend, though no wonder—with his grandmother gone, Fred’s the only person left who really listens to him.

It’s in this lonely, but faintly optimistic state that Davy first meets Altschuler, though initially this popular, clever boy—who manipulates his teachers into letting him write a theatrical version of Julius Caesar where he plays Brutus and Caesar is the villain—has no fondness for Davy. However, this is because he and Davy share a common bond: the specter of death hangs over both of them, Davy, through his loss of his grandmother, and Altschuler, through the recent death of his former best friend.

They tentatively build a friendship, which culminates in some kissing and a sleepover where the boys do something that Davy, in his narration, can only bring himself to refer to as “it.” Is it a romantic relationship? Davy’s enthusiasm for Altschuler does seem to border on enthusiastic infatuation, particularly after they kiss. But I think it’s important to remember that these boys are exceptionally young. In some ways, it would be unusual for even modern thirteen-year-olds to have the clarity of both self and identity to more earnestly and intentionally “date.”

And that’s a notion the culture of their time has no room for either, of course. When Davy kisses a girl goodbye at the beginning of the novel, they promise to be true to one another because that’s the narrative they’ve been offered, not because of any true depth of feeling or commitment. In the era in which he lived, he would have not witnessed any parallel narrative about relationships between men—so indeed, when Davy initially states that he’s “not ashamed” of what he and Altschuler “did together,” it’s a fairly revolutionary notion indeed.

But this is too honest and dark a novel for everything to proceed in a rosy way, and the brief, frantic elation that Davy seems to feel after his tryst with Altschuler soon gives way to prejudice, tragedy, and guilt. When Davy’s mother catches the boys passed out on the floor after drinking her whisky, she assumes “the worst.” But, though her response constitutes little more than homophobia, Davy’s usually-distant father offers him several different ways to look at the situation. He assures Davy that many boys experiment. Though he seems poised to offer Davy more traditional, homophobic rhetoric (noting that Davy “shouldn’t get involved in some special way of life which will close off other ways of life to” him), he also does this:

Father talks a lot about how hysterical people sometimes get when they discover that other people aren’t just what they are expected to be. He tells me there are Republicans who are always secretly disappointed when friends turn out to be Democrats, and Catholics who like their friends to be Catholic, and so forth. He says that such people are narrow-minded, he believes and funny too, unless they become hysterical about getting everyone to be just alike. Then they are dangerous. They become religious bigots, super-patriots, super-antipatriotic, and do I understand? I tell him I think I do, but can’t people learn to understand other people? He thinks they can, but only if they want to.

Davy’s relationship with Altshuler is resolved with a similarly shaky note of cautious optimism. Davy, guilt-wracked (due to some incredibly spoilery stuff which is mentioned in just about every other review, though I am determined not to spoil it; it’s heart-wrenching, though), seems uncomfortable with the notion of continuing their physical relationship. But Altschuler seems nonplussed. In fact, he’s downright blasé about the whole issue, ready to respect Davy’s choices, but fully accepting of his own. He says:

“Go ahead and feel guilty if you want to. I don’t.”

“You don’t, really?”

“No,” Altshuler says.

“I guess the important thing is not to do it again,” I say.

“I don’t care. If you think it’s dirty or something like that, I wouldn’t do it again. If I were you.”

This ending note—one of ambiguity, which suggests that Davy might not end up being “out” in the long term—seems to be what stops readers like Angie, quoted above, from whole-heartedly recommending the book to modern teens. However, it’s a realistic way to end the book, not only because of historical context (in which case, it’s really the only way to end the book) but because of the characters’ ages. In truth, Davy’s father is in some ways right—many boys do experiment and decide it has no bearing on their eventual identity. Some, of course, decide to identify as gay or queer or bisexual—but few teens have come to terms, openly and completely, with their sexualities by age thirteen. It’s the demand for narratives that present overly neat, unrealistic resolutions to questions of identity that largely keep those on the queer spectrum (rather than simply “gay” or “straight”) out of young adult literature, and it’s also just not completely honest. It’s certainly not reflective of the journeys of most of the queer people I know.

And this pressure to create narratives that are neatly resolved rather than messy, complex, and realistic is also part of what keeps “gay” teen novels shelved firmly in the YA-Issue book ghetto. Books whose sole concern is to affirm identity, rather than to create compelling characters and stories, are really often very boring. This makes it difficult for them to have as broad an impact as they might otherwise.

But I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip is not boring. It is, in fact, a sprawling, emotionally painful, and profoundly real novel, one that’s so much more than Davy’s concerns about kissing another boy. And that’s where decisions not to buy this book—because it fails to affirm a certain (limited, not entirely realistic) queer narrative—fail. This is, in fact, a brutal novel about grief, family, alcoholism, and dogs. More than just the story of a “gay kid”, it’s the story of a very real and brilliantly realized kid, and one whose sharp observations about life, whose keen wit, and whose story, has both entertainment value and teaching value to all teens, regardless of their sexualities.

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Annexed by Sharon Dogar

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I first heard of Sharon Dogar’s Annexed because of the controversy. This novel, told from the perspective of Peter van Pels (the boy who was briefly loved by Anne Frank during their tenure in the famous attic), would apparently detail their sexual relationship–a fact which very much upset van Pels’ last surviving relative. Book banners and horrified parents were immediately up in arms–how could anyone both appropriate and besmirch Anne Frank’s memory?

To which I only gave a derisive snort–had these people even read Anne’s diary?

I did, and though it’s been about a decade, even I recall with clarity the sexual passages in the uncensored diary. Sure, some of these passages stood out in my mind because I was, myself, a teenager, but they also seemed striking to me because they were so very true to a young girl’s sexual awakening. In fact, that fearless honesty is what makes Frank’s diary one of the few Holocaust narratives that I don’t find, honestly, a little tiresome. This was a voice that had so much more to talk about than the horrors of war–including, certainly, sex.

Ironically, Dogar talks about sex far less than Anne Frank did. I went into Annexed expecting something akin to sexy Anne Frank fan-fiction. In terms of sexual content, there’s almost none, despite the adolescent male narrator. Peter van Pels has a handful of wet dreams at the beginning of the novel–later, he and Anne kiss and cuddle and once he mentions feeling her breasts against him. The horror! These accounts struck me as merely honest; this is not a salacious book.

But it is a fairly effective one. Dogar gives us a complimentary narrative to set alongside Anne’s. Though I was initially annoyed by the plain-spoken voice she utilizes for Peter’s narration, eventually I was convinced of the honesty of the tone. Though not particularly artful, this is a good match for Anne’s writing in the original diary. In terms of characterization, Peter himself is exceptionally well-realized, and his interactions with his parents, and the other attic inhabitants (not to mention the attic cats) do quite a bit to endear him to the reader. And his relationship with Anne builds slowly, deliberately, and absolutely believably.

Peter’s observations about Anne, both initially and as the relationship developed, were fascinating. Though I’ve seen some reviewers decry Dogar’s portrayal of Anne as an annoyingly-driven young writer, I bought it, and I certainly bought Peter’s self-consciousness about their young relationship being preserved for the ages in Anne’s diary. In a way, I can’t help but think of them as a young version of the couple in Margaret Atwood’s “Their Attitudes Differ”: “Please die, I said, so I can write about it.” Dogar does a good job of accurately reflecting the thorny complications of a relationship with a writer.

Not everything in here works perfectly. I was irritated by some of the stylistic choices: the dull-as-dirt chapter headings, the intrusive frame narration that only got more grating as the book proceeded, the stark weirdness of a present-tense narration in a story that’s a flashback. I’m certain Dogar did this deliberately; she eventually merges the voices. But when it comes down to it, it just doesn’t work. Dying Peter’s voice intrudes even on the later scenes, which are, themselves, quite dark as they’re set in the death camps. I found myself skipping many of these italicized passages to no ill effect so I could better focus on the central story of Peter as a living boy.

Despite this, the core story remains powerful and affecting. Ultimately Dogar is successful at giving voice to Peter, a real person who has so often been relegated to playing a bit part in the life of a girl he once briefly loved.

Disclosure: I received a review copy of this volume from netgalley.com.

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Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel by Lisa See

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In a brilliant bit of gender stereotyping, my husband has been heard to observe of my friendships with other women that they’re far more like romantic relationships than the friendships he has with other men. Though I bristle a bit at the embedded assumptions there, I can’t deny that in some ways it’s true; in many ways my female friends really are my girlfriends, for better (our emotional intimacy and the support we provide, the feelings of inclusiveness and love) or worse (the emotional dependency, the arguments, the obligations). These friendships can be thorny, but only because they’re also complex, and I’ve always loved fiction that highlighst these complexities and complications.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See delicately explores just these issues. It’s the story of Lily, a nineteenth century Chinese woman in a rising family, who is matched in sworn sisterhood with the Snow Flower of the title. Their relationship, a “laotong” match made just after both girls have their feet bound at age seven, is privileged among their society as one of the few relationships forged by choice rather than familial obligation. Meant to last the women’s lifetime, the laotong match is valued even above the union that’s made in marriage.

Through the course of the girls’ lifetime, we see Lily and Snow Flower progress from bright young girls optimistically looking forward to a lifetime of friendship into established heads of two very different households. Like wine, their friendship grows more complex as they age, though it’s sometimes tainted by jealousies and competition, and is eventually shattered by the growing gap in their social status. This is where See is most successful: at capturing all the nuances, from the sexual to the social, of close female friendships.

In doing so, she also offers us a fascinating and fairly enveloping look at a historical period very different from our own. Not only do we learn about the horrors of foot binding in Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, but also about nu shu, a secret women’s language through which the girls correspond. But it’s not necessarily in these edifying subjects, but in the immersive nature of the setting and the general tone of the novel that Snow Flower and the Secret Fan really succeeds as a period piece.

In fact, it was only during certain passages about foot binding, language, history, and music, that I really felt See faltered. In providing us with needlessly ample background, her tone becomes encyclopedic and pulled me out of the novel’s emotional epicenter. Now, that’s not to say that I didn’t find these topics interesting, but I sometimes felt like she was trying to prove something to the reader, saying: “HEY LOOK! I’VE RESEARCHED THIS LITTLE-KNOWN LANGUAGE! YOU’RE LEARNING! THIS IS A HISTORICAL NOVEL!”

Such insistence doesn’t do her characters or story any favors. Still, this remains a worthwhile read for what it does do well–illuminating a very special and treasured friendship, for all the wonders and dangers such a friendship offers.

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The White Queen by Philippa Gregory

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I first encountered Philippa Gregory while working in a library. I was desperate for a juicy read, and a co-worker suggested The Other Bolelyn Girl. It definitely pulled me in, and, though I loved it enough to get my mother hooked on Gregory’s Tudor series and race through all of them myself, I never quite managed to feel less-than self-conscious about reading them. All the perfect, lily-white and lovable heroines always struck me as a bit Mary Sueish, and though the history was fascinating, at times her interpretation of it felt overly modern and lacking in grit.

Gregory’s certainly come into her own, stylistically and in terms of characterization, in The White Queen

The White Queen is the first of a new series–having exhaustively chronicled the lives of the Tudor women (which, by The Boleyn Inheritance had exhausted me)–she takes us back a generation and introduces us to the Plantagenets and the War of the Roses. This first book is narrated by Elizabeth of Woodville, who certainly seems to have been a worthy subject. A widow, whose secret marriage to King Edward IV raised rancor between he and the man who helped him ascend to the crown, she was also frequently rumored to be a witch.

Gregory’s inclusion of witchcraft here, along with the integration of the medieval myth of Melusina, from whom Elizabeth Woodville’s family believed themselves to be descended, was one of my favorite things about The White Queen. The myth itself is included within the text and is a beautifully written compliment to Woodville’s story. And the acts of witchcraft shine as an almost feminist, but still believably-period trope. Through their spills and charms the Woodville women attempt to maintain some semblance of influence over their lives, lives which are very much largely decided by the political whims of the men around them. This is a welcome change from Gregory’s murkier use of witchcraft in her Tudor books. There, the title of “witch” is only ever used as a weapon against women. Here, while witchcraft isn’t without its risks, it’s a risk that Woodville gladly takes in order to express her desires and hopefully help them come to fruition.

Woodville’s motivations generally were varied; she’s a refreshingly believable character and remains so as we watch her grow into middle age. But the speed of this growth sometimes frustrated me. The White Queen has an interesting hook and some killer foreshadowing that make the first hundred pages an addictive read, but much of that is lost in the repetition of Woodville’s life. That she had child upon child while her husband engaged in war upon war might be historically accurate, but it doesn’t always make for riveting reading. There were a solid hundred and fifty pages that could have been excised here without damage to the narrative. And, because I was quite eager to see how Gregory worked the legend of the Princes in the Tower into the story, many of the more mundane plot lines failed to pique my interest.

Still, though, even during the book’s saggy middle there were some moments of beautiful writing: the scene describing the death of Woodville’s mother and daughter is executed in a particularly artful and tender way. I have high hopes for this new series–perhaps The White Queen represents a new stage in Gregory’s writing, one filled with gorgeous writing, nuanced characters and (let’s hope) enough new material to sustain the interest of her readers.

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