- Two boys kissing. David Levithan. Craig and Harry were boyfriends; then they became best friends, which one of them believes is better and the other does not. Right now they are getting ready for an amazing project: Kissing for thirty-two hours, twelve minutes and ten seconds in their schoolyard, to set a new world record. Tariq is setting up the video feed for their kiss —he knows this idea started when he himself was gay-bashed not that long ago. Peter and Neil are watching the kiss in live stream, even as they deal with their own relationship problems. Avery and Ryan have only just met and hear about the kiss on the radio, even as they struggle with how much of themselves they should reveal. Cooper is not aware of the kiss; he’s too busy flirting endlessly online, unaware of the major crisis heading his way. And watching over all these ‘baby gays’ is the collective consciousness of their elders —the gay generation that was almost entirely lost to AIDS…
A remarkable and sweet YA novel; once again, it’s the kind of book I wish I myself had read as a teenager. The choral narrator is a very effective touch. The characters are a touch schematic (though I did like one of them casually being revealed to be Trans), and the narration now and then gets inappropriately moralizing (such as when it tries to posit that platonic affection is always better than a purely sexual relationship or that progress is always a direct line —i.e., that all times past were at least al little worse and therefore all times to come will automatically be better). In these moments the author seems a bit too overly aware that he’s writing for teenagers. But the book overcomes these flaws when it focuses more on the characters’ sentimental journeys. And at the best moments, the narration is almost poetic in its descriptions.
Overall, quite recommended.
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