i'm on a semi-professional kick of reading books with young protagonists dealing with sexual awakening. it's semi-professional because, while i'm slated to teach a class about teens' sexuality, teaching is never far from the soft nub of my life, and i tend to teach what my mind is working at figuring out at the time. managing to do this requires a constant whirlwind of reading-list changes and in-between-semesters reading -- my mind re-adjusts its focus constantly, and even a tiny little adjustment is enough to throw into the shadows everything that's familiar and bring into sharpness unknown realities -- but it works for me. i understand my life (better) by teaching books that deal with some raw-pink aspects of it, and i understand things better when i discuss them with others. the problem here is that i have intentionally avoided books focused on kids and especially kids' sexuality like the plague, because i've always found them profoundly uninteresting. beware of the topics that cause a strong negative reaction in you! so i'm reading and thinking and exploring like crazy, and some of it is dizzying and exhilarating, and some of it is devastating. i owe my realization that i do indeed like books about kids to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, and my realization that i like books about kids' sexuality to rigoberto gilb's lovely and brilliant The Flowers. also about kids' sexuality, i'm now reading the astonishing (i keep checking that this is indeed only this author's SECOND NOVEL) Animal's People, as slowly as i can manage because such depth and intelligence deserve savoring. and i just gobbled up the dark but fabulous graphic novel Skim.on the other hand, i read Keeping You a Secret in two goes and i'd probably give it an "it's okay" two-star rating if it weren't a pioneering book that caused its author to come out (again) in a way she hadn't anticipated or planned. hence, one star for courage.Secret is a formulaic book with a competent but rather pedestrian writing style and a series of predictable moves. the characters are depthless and the only aspect of their lives and minds that gets addressed is their nuts and bolts desire -- mostly their sexual desire, or lack thereof. the books i mention above deal with kids' desire in the context of the immense complexity of their lives. this is the time, after all, when we discover our capacity for independence and deviousness, our potential for originality, and our ability-slash-inability to mold our own place in the world, and negotiate these thrilling and terrifying realities with the need we still feel for protection and guidance. sexuality and sexual desire (and all the issues related to sexual expectations and conformity) are only one facet of all this, or, maybe, its most visible, compelling, driving representative.that julie anne peters focuses on sexuality without much attention to what it represents and is linked to makes her book pornographic. which, by the way, Secret most definitely isn't, because all sexual scenes are only guessing objects, and, if i'm correct, the only explicit description we get of any sexual act at all is contained in the adjective "soft" in connection to the protagonist holland's and her paramour cece's first kiss. ** SPOILER **this is the one book in the list i offered that devastated instead of exhilarated me. part of it is what i just said -- the barren pornographic nature of it. another part of it is the drab writing. the occasion, though, that made the desolation real and stark and material for me was the moment when holland's mother, upon discovering that holland is sleeping with cece, goes completely berserk and gives her exactly two minutes to pack her stuff and get out of the house. this is a tremendously shocking moment because, until then, nothing in the novel had given us the impression that holland's mother might even be capable of such irrational inhumanity. holland's household is blandly normal: the step-father is a benign if colorless figure, the mother is portrayed as wanting to get her daughter's life right because she couldn't do it with her own, but this is represented in terms of wanting her to go to a good college, something holland is resisting because she is not sure of (and no one is interested in) what she really wants. true, holland's mother got pregnant with holland and had to drop out of a more fulfilling life to raise her when she was a teen, and if this makes holland feel less than, you know, wanted, it also impacts her external life minimally. she is free to come and go as she pleases, to spend the night with her boyfriend, and lead her own life with basically no interference from her mother (except for the college thing, which is an object of constant nagging). ** MORE SPOILING **so i saw the cruel homophobia of holland's mother as coming out of left field. it's even more astounding that there is no reconciliation at all before the novel's end. in one swift stroke she excises her daughter from her life. she changes the locks of the house, doesn't know where she's staying, throws away her stuff (!), takes her money (!!!), and doesn't want her back unless she leaves cece. really, out of control.parental homophobia is a fabulously interesting topic, but peters does nothing to help us understand it. she just hits us in the gut with it, and it hurts something awful. you wonder, was this girl ever loved? and have no way to answer because the novel's bi-dimensional characters give you nowhere to go. yet holland seems remarkably well adjusted. she deals with her life well. she's an excellent student, a tireless swimmer, deals with breaking up with her boyfriend really well, deals with her discovery of her gayness really well, loves selflessly, is kind to her family... given what happens, and the obvious roots of it, you have to ask: where is this girl's rage? but peters doesn't give you rage. she gives you a nice kid with a crazy mother and no explanation for it. the pornography of Secret is in all the emotions the book evokes in you without giving you any lead in how to interpret them and put them to good use in your life. which, in a YA novel, seems particularly shameful.okay, i've just talked myself out of teaching it.
Самая большая моя претензия к этой книге - авторский стиль. В книгах YA, которые нравятся мне, язык повествования зрелый, сложный. Только герои очень молоды. А в данном случае как будто действительно рассказывает школьник. Язык очень простой.При этом описываются только действия - пошла, сказала, сделала, написала, поцеловала и т.д. - мыслей и описаний почти нет. И это моя вторая большая претензия. Я ведь не сценарий читаю, а книгу. Я хочу видеть, как Холланд (главная героиня) переживает, осмысливает, воспринимает все происходящее. Хочу видеть, что стоит за ее поступками и словами. Но ввиду отсутствия внутренних диалогов, героиня представляется поверхностной и инертной девушкой, которая движется в тех направлениях, куда ее ведут мать, парень, подруги, проф-консультанты, а потом и новая подружка.Кстати, эта самая подружка вообще не вызвала приятных чувств. Зациклена только на себе.Относительно интереснее стало читать примерно последнюю четверть книги. Начался ангст. Героиню "аутили", мать выгнала из дома, друзья отвернулись и т.п. Действия матери Холланд вызвали у меня недоверие. Она была зациклена отправить дочь в престижный ВУЗ, просто одержима. И к тому же ее саму когда-то мать выгнала за раннюю беременность. И вот дочь оказалась не такой идеальной, как она думала, но пришло согласие из достойного колледжа. И она вот так просто выкинула свою идею-фикс на ветер? И дочь туда же, на улицу, без цента в кармане, предварительно избив? Не верится. Верю, что она может быть против, но не настолько. Или хотя бы позже смягчиться. И отчим Холланд тоже хорош. В смысле не правдоподобен. Если у него хватило мозгов удержать жену, от дальнейших избиений и чтобы она дала пару минут (!) Холланд собрать вещи, мог бы удержать ее и подольше. И потом негатива от него и не было, даже дочь свою отпускал к Холланд, значит мог бы и денег дать, тем более все заработанное и накопленное ею мамаша прибрала себе.Кстати, насчет денег. Убежала Холланд, забыв про свои сбережения. Опять же, разве не первая мысль, что взять - это документы и деньги, а потом уже вещи? Ну тут ладно, у меня просто сомнения на этот счет.Но несмотря на все вышесказанное, у меня сложилось впечатление, что девочкам-геям хуже, чем мальчикам. Их чморят не только другие девочки, но и мальчишки, более сильные физически. И это страшно.П.С. Сексуальный аспект не раскрывается вообще. Поцелуй - просто поцеловала и все. Секс либо упоминается вскользь либо только намекается, и сцена тут же меняется.
What do You think about Keeping You A Secret (2005)?
I had a hard time rating this one. I kept swinging between a 3 and a four-so 3.5 stars.I enjoyed the characters and how normal their relationship was-like any other teenage relationship (with certain consequesnces sure) and I appreciated that this author could portray that. I did like the MC, but I loved her love interest Cece. She was utterly human, forgivable flaws and all. There is nothing really extraordinary about this-no new way of showing things or twisted plot lines, or OMG amazing writing. Just a solid realistic teenage romance about two girls and how their families cope-because it's the families that need to change-not the girls. Sweet read.
—Jade
Why do our queer novels and movies always have to write about this massive plight that their gayness inevitably is? Everything that happened was so extreme and exacerbated to the point of annoyance. A girl who has no idea that she's gay meets a girl, falls in love and leaves her boyfriend for it.... that's all I ever really want from my lezzie mellodramas. But then they have to throw in crazy things like homophobic spray paintings on lockers, tire slashings out of some anti-gay retribution, sneaking around and getting thrown out of the house for making it with a girl... I'm sure this kind of stuff happens still but not to the degree that it's perpetuated by our forms of entertainment. Perhaps if we just portrayed homosexuality as real occurances of life instead of dramatic tragedies, it wouldn't be the big bad wolf we always expect it to be.
—Franki Quinliven
When I saw it on Amazon.com when I was looking for books one or two years ago, I had no idea it was a GLBT novel. Although, I read GLBT fan fictions, reading a novel about sexuality is just refreshing.This book gave me some sort of connection to Holland. I can identify myself with her in terms of just being who I want to be. It's hard to live on people's expectations that once you've got the freedom of doing what you want, you don't know what you would do with it.Julie Anne Peters showed in this book that the teenage years is the hardest part of life, especially when it comes to gender identity. People reasons out that "it's just a phase", when it's clear as daylight that being gay, lesbian, bisexual or other gender identity is not a phase if the person really knows in his-/herself that s/he is not straight.This maybe a coming-of-age book, but I think parents should read this, too. See the perspective of a teenager who is going through this stage in their life through the POV of Holland in the book. Parents are the one who should show acceptance on what their children chooses to be.Also, I was disappointed at the ending. I was hoping that I would read somewhere (or maybe I just missed it out) who outed Holland to her mother and if Holland and Cece is finally free to be just be and show people that they're just two people in love despite their sexuality. But, I guess, it's up to me and other readers to create or think of how we want the story to end.
—Mae
