Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Mariner Books (2014), Paperback, 320 pages
Description
Fiction. Literature. HTML:When Adam Freedman �?? a skinny, awkward, inexperienced teenager from Piedmont, California �?? goes to stay with his older sister Casey in New York City, he is hopeful that his life is about to change. And it sure does. It is the summer of 2006. Gay marriage and transgender rights are in the air, and Casey has thrust herself into a wild lesbian subculture. Soon Adam is tagging along to underground clubs, where there are hot older women everywhere he turns. It takes some time for him to realize that many in this new crowd assume he is trans�??a boy who was born a girl. Why else would this baby-faced guy always be around? Then Adam meets Gillian, the girl of his dreams �?? but she couldn't possibly be interested in him. Unless passing as a trans guy might actually work in his favor . . . Ariel Schrag's scathingly funny and poignant debut novel puts a fresh spin on questions of love, attraction, self-definition, and what it takes to be at home in yo… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member stephiewonder
This book was vile. Pretty much full of the white cis male gaze and the exploitation of lesbians and trans people. Even if some of the settings and characters were interesting and authentic, they were tainted by an unreliable narrator who only cared about having (straight) sex with (lesbian) women.
LibraryThing member mjlivi
This is a big pile of no for me. The writing is breezy and witty and the idea of a YA-ish book that treats gender and sexuality in an open and interesting way is great, but the plot is basically offensive. The main character is unpleasant, the way he passes as a trans man to get laid is
More broadly, the book is clearly trying to provide some sort of education for straight clueless teenagers like the titular Adam about queer issues, but so much of the good work is undermined by the complete lack of comeuppance for him for his complete deception of his dream-girl (also: ugh to the idea that Gillian is the embodiment of some fantasy he had on his way to NYC).
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depressingly awful and the final twist, that the lesbian woman he deceives is basically fine with it and, in fact, is turned straight by the power of his dick is just gross. More broadly, the book is clearly trying to provide some sort of education for straight clueless teenagers like the titular Adam about queer issues, but so much of the good work is undermined by the complete lack of comeuppance for him for his complete deception of his dream-girl (also: ugh to the idea that Gillian is the embodiment of some fantasy he had on his way to NYC).
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LibraryThing member RidgewayGirl
Adam is seventeen, lives in an affluent suburb of Berkeley, California and attends a private high school. He's also directionless, insecure and hanging onto inclusion in the popular group through the skin of his teeth. He's looking to escape all of that when he convinces his parents to let him stay
Adam is a young adult novel, and Ariel Schrag is writing for older teenagers. I'm no longer the audience for this book, and had to set aside my irritation with the simplicity and repetition of the genre. In many ways, this reads like a Very Special Episode, but airing on late night HBO. Which is not to downplay the importance of a book about lesbian and transgender issues that is aimed at heterosexual teenagers. Schrag treats her characters like real people, so that just because a character is a trans man doesn't mean he can't also be an oblivious jerk. Adam, himself, is a complex guy, with his insecurities and concern that he look and behave in exactly the right way as well as the real affection he has for the girl he likes and his relationship with the sister he admires and worries about.
On the other hand, there were a few serious flaws in this novel. There's a secret Adam is keeping from his girlfriend, a secret which forms the central conflict in the book. Yet, at the last minute, Schrag pulls her punch here and makes that secret not a big deal, and that secret is revealed in a scene in which there is a question of consent that should have been treated as more than not a big deal, especially considering the personalities of the characters before that point. There were two fairly significant issues dropped into the novel towards the end that were there as far as I could see only to provide a bit of interest as the novel wrapped up, and a lot of lessons about gender issues that felt like they'd been copied directly from the author's research notes.
This isn't a novel without merit, but it's too flawed to be able to recommend it whole-heartedly. It will be interesting to see what Ariel Schrag writes next, as she shows potential and a willingness to dive into difficult issues.
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for the summer with his college-age sister and her roommates in Brooklyn. His sister, Casey, is a lesbian and through her Adam meets a variety of lesbians and trans men. Adam is preoccupied with sex (he is seventeen, after all), but also dreams of romantic love, which he finds with a pretty red-haired girl.Adam is a young adult novel, and Ariel Schrag is writing for older teenagers. I'm no longer the audience for this book, and had to set aside my irritation with the simplicity and repetition of the genre. In many ways, this reads like a Very Special Episode, but airing on late night HBO. Which is not to downplay the importance of a book about lesbian and transgender issues that is aimed at heterosexual teenagers. Schrag treats her characters like real people, so that just because a character is a trans man doesn't mean he can't also be an oblivious jerk. Adam, himself, is a complex guy, with his insecurities and concern that he look and behave in exactly the right way as well as the real affection he has for the girl he likes and his relationship with the sister he admires and worries about.
On the other hand, there were a few serious flaws in this novel. There's a secret Adam is keeping from his girlfriend, a secret which forms the central conflict in the book. Yet, at the last minute, Schrag pulls her punch here and makes that secret not a big deal, and that secret is revealed in a scene in which there is a question of consent that should have been treated as more than not a big deal, especially considering the personalities of the characters before that point. There were two fairly significant issues dropped into the novel towards the end that were there as far as I could see only to provide a bit of interest as the novel wrapped up, and a lot of lessons about gender issues that felt like they'd been copied directly from the author's research notes.
This isn't a novel without merit, but it's too flawed to be able to recommend it whole-heartedly. It will be interesting to see what Ariel Schrag writes next, as she shows potential and a willingness to dive into difficult issues.
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LibraryThing member PrimosParadise
Didn't like it. It was as if HBO took over the Afterschool Special series and said "let's see how much we can shock you" while still feeling like the outline was written by John Green. I don't think the writing was anything special and frankly, the subject matter was not in my wheelhouse. Can't see
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why this is in the TOB at all; I really think it is there because it is the closest thing to a main stream book that delves into the current gender issues dialogue. I just think that there is a book out there that can treat the subject matter with a little more respect with a lot less despicable characters and without making it seem that the sex is the only reason these characters exist at all. Plus, come on, getting away with deceiving someone by misrepresenting your sexuality when that other person has spent their life struggling with their own identification is massively sh*tty. Show Less
LibraryThing member gayla.bassham
I sincerely hope this is the worst book I read this year. It was just awful, and the ending manages to be both highly offensive and wildly implausible. Yuck.
LibraryThing member csoki637
Torn between giving it two or three stars, I have mixed feelings about this book. Upon reading its summary, I was appalled — a teenage boy pretends to be trans in order to get into girls' pants? — and would have never tortured myself to read it, had the main character not been from Piedmont.
I generally avoid novels written or narrated by men, and Adam was a good reminder of why. Adam watches pornography, masturbates obsessively, and literally cannot look at a girl without getting a hard-on. His best friend, Brad, is even worse. A borderline rapist, he dates girls for the sex, and then discards them when he's bored. He coaxes his girlfriend into cyber sex while Adam is reading the whole thing too, unawares to her. And the scene that I found one of the most painful to read: he drags Adam into the backyard so the two of them can watch, through the curtains, Adam's lesbian sister have sex with her girlfriend. Offensive doesn't even describe it. Male behavior in this novel straight-up horrifying, and I pitied every woman who had any interaction with these characters.
At the same time, the novel was addictive. I kept putting it down and then picking it up again, until I finished it in nearly one sitting. Plot-wise, Adam quickly leaves Piedmont and heads to New York to spend a summer at his sister's, where he finds himself immersed in the queer community. In exquisite detail, Ariel Schrag paints a vivid and realistic picture of queer/trans politics, circa 2006. From characters who read Donna Haraway ("She identifies as a cyborg" p. 146) to zie and hir pronouns to intracommunity clashes over the radicalness of same-sex marriage ("He could tell Casey was quickly realizing there was something not cool about being for gay marriage" p. 116), this aspect of the novel feels very real, and it's thrilling to see this reality represented in fiction. The scene is portrayed with some distance, from a narrator who is neither gay, trans, or female and is decidedly unaware of what's going on, at least at the beginning of the novel.
Schrag obviously has had first-hand experience in the scene she describes, and it's a fantastic opportunity to offer some critique, which I was eager for. Occasionally, you get glimmers of criticism in some lines:
"'What do you mean 'gay marriage is not the solution'?" said Hazel. 'It's the solution to gay people not being able to get married.'" (p. 120)
"'You guys were dating,' said Adam. 'He sucks.'
"'It's just, it's kind of a trans thing, though,' she said. 'He's new to his body, his sexuality. As an emerging trans person, he needs to be free to explore sexual experiences now that he's not constricted by his assigned gender.'
"Casey was doing that thing where she repeats something someone else told her and it sounds totally weird coming out of her mouth.
"'I guess,' said Adam. He'd learned that anything that had anything to do with 'being trans' was not a thing you questioned." (pp. 101–102)
"'You guys from L.A., the Bay, or what?' said Schuyler.
"'We're from San Francisco.'
"San Francisco?
"'We live in Piedmont,' said Adam.
"Casey glared at him. 'Nobody knows Piedmont. We're from the Bay Area — people know San Francisco.'
[...]
"'Isn't Piedmont kind of rich?' said Schuyler.
"'It's near Oakland,' said Casey."
(p. 86)
(Despite the book's Berkeley-centricism elsewhere, that last excerpt offered a flawless portrayal of Piedmont youth and their rush to disavow themselves of visible privilege.)
So I hoped, really hoped, that Schrag would offer a scathing critique of both the disgusting, entitled male mindset and the toxic queer culture she portrayed. Unfortunately, this was rather lacking. Adam, who has never had any female friends, as far as I could tell, and only approaches women in order to get sexual satisfaction from them, imagines a beautiful red-haired girl who will fall in love with him and make him the envy of his male friends. Is his absurd fantasy and objectification of women challenged? No, to the contrary: It's validated, when he does meet his fantasy redhead, who falls for him immediately. His friend, Brad, exploits women left and right and, let me repeat again, had the idea to watch Casey and her girlfriend have sex through the window. Does Adam end the friendship, outraged by his appalling behavior? Only when it turns out that Brad is, unsurprisingly, a raging transphobe as well as a misogynist. At the same time, the queer scene is full of disturbingly coercive sex. The whole cast of characters ends up at a "play party," where women are being beaten, splayed out naked, and judged for their abilities to fellate dildos. One of the few characters who seemed to have any integrity, Casey's roommate June, jumps on Casey when the latter is drunk out of her mind, rips off her clothes in front of a crowd of people, and begins to "hand-fuck" her in front of everybody. The only person who seems at all taken aback by such incidents, offering mild criticism of the abusive characters involved in such scenes, is Adam. Who is in no place to talk about manipulation and rape culture.
Let's get back to the core of the story. Adam is not trans. He's not gay. A heterosexual virgin, embittered by girls' rejection of him, he realizes that when lesbian and bisexual women read him as a trans guy, he may have a way into their pants. And so he goes for it, quickly picking up aforementioned redhead fantasy girl, a character established to be a lesbian. There's not much reflection on the phenomenon of lesbians dating trans men (except for this brief exchange: "[Adam, to his up-to-that-point-lesbian-identified sister] I thought you were gay?" [Casey] "[...] I'm queer, or whatever"), but it is obvious from the text that these characters are only interested in female-bodied partners, despite their mantra "Trans men are men." And, taking advantage of that, Adam maintains the façade that he, too, has a vagina, only he doesn't want anyone to see or touch it, because of "gender stuff." Failing to tell Gillian the truth on their first date, he continues the charade into a sexually active and growingly serious relationship, spinning lies about testosterone doses and top surgery.
So, wow. Blatant disregard for lesbians' boundaries (Adam's love interest, Gillian, expresses multiple times how turned off she is by "bio guys") and shameless appropriation of trans men's lives.
But a shitty main character isn't necessarily a sympathetic portrayal. And the novel could have redeemed itself — had there been some serious reflection on how terrible Adam is. But, besides a lot of guilt pooling in the bottom of Adam's stomach, especially when he hears the news of a trans girl murdered by men who slept with her, he faces no consequences for his actions. His growth as a character is represented by clapping enthusiastically at Julia Serano's unnecessarily long reading of the spoken word piece "Cocky" at Camp Trans. I was not impressed.In fact, when he finally tells Gillian that he's not actually trans, she doesn't even blink. "I know," she says, and immediately rewards him with PIV. Literally. She later goes on to date another "bio" man, proving that lesbians can be "converted" after all!
What a mess.
There's also a strange current of (internalized and externalized) antisemitism in the novel, from comments about "the Jews," as the Hasidic landlord and co. get called, and Gillian's fetishization of Adam's Jewishness. I'm not sure how to read that, since Schrag is Jewish, and I'm not, but I'll just throw that out there.
So what to say. I really don't know. On the back cover of the paperback, Alison Bechdel described the book as "the most twisted, hilarious, and deeply gratifying reading experience [she has] had in a long time." And, finding it hard to put down, I was consumed by the novel as well. But, ultimately, it failed spectacularly at what it could have delivered, instead reinforcing oppressive narratives and offering a slap in the face to lesbians and trans men.
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Even suffering through an offense premise is worth seeing how an author represents Piedmont High in fiction, I thought. On that front, the novel didn't offer much. Adam doesn't attend public school; he goes to a fancy, entirely fictional private school called East Bay Prep, although some existing Bay Area schools are mentioned, including Bishop O'Dowd. At first, I thought Adam to be from Berkeley, since all his and his sister's friends go to Berkeley High. That might be believable for someone living in Albany, but it's hard to understand for a Piedmonter. Of course, the author herself grew up in Berkeley, so I'm not surprised that she'd add that element in exchange for an accurate portrayal of Piedmont youth.I generally avoid novels written or narrated by men, and Adam was a good reminder of why. Adam watches pornography, masturbates obsessively, and literally cannot look at a girl without getting a hard-on. His best friend, Brad, is even worse. A borderline rapist, he dates girls for the sex, and then discards them when he's bored. He coaxes his girlfriend into cyber sex while Adam is reading the whole thing too, unawares to her. And the scene that I found one of the most painful to read: he drags Adam into the backyard so the two of them can watch, through the curtains, Adam's lesbian sister have sex with her girlfriend. Offensive doesn't even describe it. Male behavior in this novel straight-up horrifying, and I pitied every woman who had any interaction with these characters.
At the same time, the novel was addictive. I kept putting it down and then picking it up again, until I finished it in nearly one sitting. Plot-wise, Adam quickly leaves Piedmont and heads to New York to spend a summer at his sister's, where he finds himself immersed in the queer community. In exquisite detail, Ariel Schrag paints a vivid and realistic picture of queer/trans politics, circa 2006. From characters who read Donna Haraway ("She identifies as a cyborg" p. 146) to zie and hir pronouns to intracommunity clashes over the radicalness of same-sex marriage ("He could tell Casey was quickly realizing there was something not cool about being for gay marriage" p. 116), this aspect of the novel feels very real, and it's thrilling to see this reality represented in fiction. The scene is portrayed with some distance, from a narrator who is neither gay, trans, or female and is decidedly unaware of what's going on, at least at the beginning of the novel.
Schrag obviously has had first-hand experience in the scene she describes, and it's a fantastic opportunity to offer some critique, which I was eager for. Occasionally, you get glimmers of criticism in some lines:
"'What do you mean 'gay marriage is not the solution'?" said Hazel. 'It's the solution to gay people not being able to get married.'" (p. 120)
"'You guys were dating,' said Adam. 'He sucks.'
"'It's just, it's kind of a trans thing, though,' she said. 'He's new to his body, his sexuality. As an emerging trans person, he needs to be free to explore sexual experiences now that he's not constricted by his assigned gender.'
"Casey was doing that thing where she repeats something someone else told her and it sounds totally weird coming out of her mouth.
"'I guess,' said Adam. He'd learned that anything that had anything to do with 'being trans' was not a thing you questioned." (pp. 101–102)
"'You guys from L.A., the Bay, or what?' said Schuyler.
"'We're from San Francisco.'
"San Francisco?
"'We live in Piedmont,' said Adam.
"Casey glared at him. 'Nobody knows Piedmont. We're from the Bay Area — people know San Francisco.'
[...]
"'Isn't Piedmont kind of rich?' said Schuyler.
"'It's near Oakland,' said Casey."
(p. 86)
(Despite the book's Berkeley-centricism elsewhere, that last excerpt offered a flawless portrayal of Piedmont youth and their rush to disavow themselves of visible privilege.)
So I hoped, really hoped, that Schrag would offer a scathing critique of both the disgusting, entitled male mindset and the toxic queer culture she portrayed. Unfortunately, this was rather lacking. Adam, who has never had any female friends, as far as I could tell, and only approaches women in order to get sexual satisfaction from them, imagines a beautiful red-haired girl who will fall in love with him and make him the envy of his male friends. Is his absurd fantasy and objectification of women challenged? No, to the contrary: It's validated, when he does meet his fantasy redhead, who falls for him immediately. His friend, Brad, exploits women left and right and, let me repeat again, had the idea to watch Casey and her girlfriend have sex through the window. Does Adam end the friendship, outraged by his appalling behavior? Only when it turns out that Brad is, unsurprisingly, a raging transphobe as well as a misogynist. At the same time, the queer scene is full of disturbingly coercive sex. The whole cast of characters ends up at a "play party," where women are being beaten, splayed out naked, and judged for their abilities to fellate dildos. One of the few characters who seemed to have any integrity, Casey's roommate June, jumps on Casey when the latter is drunk out of her mind, rips off her clothes in front of a crowd of people, and begins to "hand-fuck" her in front of everybody. The only person who seems at all taken aback by such incidents, offering mild criticism of the abusive characters involved in such scenes, is Adam. Who is in no place to talk about manipulation and rape culture.
Let's get back to the core of the story. Adam is not trans. He's not gay. A heterosexual virgin, embittered by girls' rejection of him, he realizes that when lesbian and bisexual women read him as a trans guy, he may have a way into their pants. And so he goes for it, quickly picking up aforementioned redhead fantasy girl, a character established to be a lesbian. There's not much reflection on the phenomenon of lesbians dating trans men (except for this brief exchange: "[Adam, to his up-to-that-point-lesbian-identified sister] I thought you were gay?" [Casey] "[...] I'm queer, or whatever"), but it is obvious from the text that these characters are only interested in female-bodied partners, despite their mantra "Trans men are men." And, taking advantage of that, Adam maintains the façade that he, too, has a vagina, only he doesn't want anyone to see or touch it, because of "gender stuff." Failing to tell Gillian the truth on their first date, he continues the charade into a sexually active and growingly serious relationship, spinning lies about testosterone doses and top surgery.
So, wow. Blatant disregard for lesbians' boundaries (Adam's love interest, Gillian, expresses multiple times how turned off she is by "bio guys") and shameless appropriation of trans men's lives.
But a shitty main character isn't necessarily a sympathetic portrayal. And the novel could have redeemed itself — had there been some serious reflection on how terrible Adam is. But, besides a lot of guilt pooling in the bottom of Adam's stomach, especially when he hears the news of a trans girl murdered by men who slept with her, he faces no consequences for his actions. His growth as a character is represented by clapping enthusiastically at Julia Serano's unnecessarily long reading of the spoken word piece "Cocky" at Camp Trans. I was not impressed.
What a mess.
There's also a strange current of (internalized and externalized) antisemitism in the novel, from comments about "the Jews," as the Hasidic landlord and co. get called, and Gillian's fetishization of Adam's Jewishness. I'm not sure how to read that, since Schrag is Jewish, and I'm not, but I'll just throw that out there.
So what to say. I really don't know. On the back cover of the paperback, Alison Bechdel described the book as "the most twisted, hilarious, and deeply gratifying reading experience [she has] had in a long time." And, finding it hard to put down, I was consumed by the novel as well. But, ultimately, it failed spectacularly at what it could have delivered, instead reinforcing oppressive narratives and offering a slap in the face to lesbians and trans men.
Show Less
LibraryThing member krau0098
I got a copy of this book to review through Amazon Vine. I had heard a lot about this book and occasionally read and enjoy GLBT contemporary fiction. So I was curious to see what this book was about. It was a decent book, very engaging and it gives interesting insight into trans-male
Adam hangs with the popular crowd by virtue of his best friend, who is kind of a jerk. Adam knows he is hanging onto popularity by the tips of his fingers and when his mom offers him the chance to spend the summer in New York with his sister (who is in college) he jumps at the chance. Adam knows his sister is a lesbian (his parents don’t). His sister is very involved in the GLBT scene and Adam finds himself immersed in this scene for the summer and dealing with all sorts of grey areas between gender.
Well done book about a teenage boy who spends the summer with his sister. There is a lot in here about the lesbian community and the trans-male community. Also a lot about the pains of going through your late-teenage years and early 20’s.
There is, as you might expect, a lot of talking about sex...a lot a lot. That's pretty much what the story is about. Adam's number one goal on arriving to New York is to find his dream girl and have sex with her. However, this is also a coming of age story...Adam grows and learns a lot from his experiences in New York.
I am a bit conflicted about saying this appropriate for YA. There is a lot about sex toys, sex operations, and even some very graphic bondage scenes. The sex scenes are very graphic as well. Although Adam is seventeen, all of the other surrounding characters are in their 20's. So I guess I would say older YA or new adult might be the more appropriate audience for this book.
I applaud Schrag for really delving into the dirty details of the GLBT and trans-male crowd. The story is well written and engaging. However, there was sooo much sex in here that it actually got a bit numbing and boring to read about. There were a couple times where I was like..."Oh great another scene with girls doing it with a strap-on...yawn". Maybe that is the point, Adam is inundated with sooo much that he becomes a bit numb to some of it…
My only complaint about the above is I think it portrays the lesbian and trans-male community in this very sex-hungry and promiscuous light. I am going to go out on a limb here (being sarcastic) and say that there are lesbians and trans-males that like their sex life private (as in not having sex in public places or in front of lots of people) and monogamous...just like there are heteros who span all sides of the arena. I wish that we had gotten to interact with some young people who were in a loving relationship for the long haul no matter what their gender or non-gender was. What is portrayed here is mainly a group of sex-hungry individuals who are struggling to define their identities...it’s just something I had trouble relating to. I wasn’t like that and my gay friends weren’t like that at that age either.
Anyway, it's an interesting read. Just beware of the content if you are disturbed or offended by graphic sex scenes or bondage. The whole story ends kind of abruptly and without much closure, but that mimics real life fairly well.
Overall this is an engaging read that I enjoyed for the most part. It gives an interesting look into the lesbian and trans-male cultures of New York City and is also an interesting coming of age story about a boy finding his way. The sexual content is pretty graphic so I would recommend for older teen and new adult readers.
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communities.Adam hangs with the popular crowd by virtue of his best friend, who is kind of a jerk. Adam knows he is hanging onto popularity by the tips of his fingers and when his mom offers him the chance to spend the summer in New York with his sister (who is in college) he jumps at the chance. Adam knows his sister is a lesbian (his parents don’t). His sister is very involved in the GLBT scene and Adam finds himself immersed in this scene for the summer and dealing with all sorts of grey areas between gender.
Well done book about a teenage boy who spends the summer with his sister. There is a lot in here about the lesbian community and the trans-male community. Also a lot about the pains of going through your late-teenage years and early 20’s.
There is, as you might expect, a lot of talking about sex...a lot a lot. That's pretty much what the story is about. Adam's number one goal on arriving to New York is to find his dream girl and have sex with her. However, this is also a coming of age story...Adam grows and learns a lot from his experiences in New York.
I am a bit conflicted about saying this appropriate for YA. There is a lot about sex toys, sex operations, and even some very graphic bondage scenes. The sex scenes are very graphic as well. Although Adam is seventeen, all of the other surrounding characters are in their 20's. So I guess I would say older YA or new adult might be the more appropriate audience for this book.
I applaud Schrag for really delving into the dirty details of the GLBT and trans-male crowd. The story is well written and engaging. However, there was sooo much sex in here that it actually got a bit numbing and boring to read about. There were a couple times where I was like..."Oh great another scene with girls doing it with a strap-on...yawn". Maybe that is the point, Adam is inundated with sooo much that he becomes a bit numb to some of it…
My only complaint about the above is I think it portrays the lesbian and trans-male community in this very sex-hungry and promiscuous light. I am going to go out on a limb here (being sarcastic) and say that there are lesbians and trans-males that like their sex life private (as in not having sex in public places or in front of lots of people) and monogamous...just like there are heteros who span all sides of the arena. I wish that we had gotten to interact with some young people who were in a loving relationship for the long haul no matter what their gender or non-gender was. What is portrayed here is mainly a group of sex-hungry individuals who are struggling to define their identities...it’s just something I had trouble relating to. I wasn’t like that and my gay friends weren’t like that at that age either.
Anyway, it's an interesting read. Just beware of the content if you are disturbed or offended by graphic sex scenes or bondage. The whole story ends kind of abruptly and without much closure, but that mimics real life fairly well.
Overall this is an engaging read that I enjoyed for the most part. It gives an interesting look into the lesbian and trans-male cultures of New York City and is also an interesting coming of age story about a boy finding his way. The sexual content is pretty graphic so I would recommend for older teen and new adult readers.
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LibraryThing member BraveNewBks
I think it is possible that Ariel Schrag sat down at her desk one day and said to herself, "Self, I think you should write a novel that will introduce teens to important concepts of queer theory, and to some of the realities of trans men and women's lives, but from the perspective of a cis hetero
And so she did.
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male so they don't reject it out of hand."And so she did.
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Awards
The Morning News Tournament of Books (Short List — 2015)
Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize (Longlist — Fiction — 2015)
Language
Physical description
320 p.; 5.31 inches
ISBN
0544142934 / 9780544142930