This is a book that is simultaneously very, very well written and is culturally specific about details that I didn't even know would or could resonant with me as strongly as they would, while also not being the kind of story that I personally need or even especially want to read right now. I feel very conflicted!
The story is set in Montana in the early '90s, and begins just after Cameron's parents are killed in a car accident. One of her first reactions to this news is relief, because the big secret she's carrying around is that she and her female best friend have kissed, and now her parents will never know, and thank god. Cameron is three years older than I was during those years, and while I grew up in a very different area of the country, I definitely grew up in the same culture, both in terms of how her queerness interacted with the world and how she learned about what it meant to be a lesbian, and also in terms of what it generally felt like to be a teenager at that time, queer or straight. She has a summer girlfriend who's on a rival swim team, and that girlfriend teaches her about the specific counterculture that came out of the pacific northwest, and all I could think about was my personal equivalent of that girlfriend and how painfully real the whole thing felt.
"Painfully real" is probably a good way to describe the entire book, for me, even the second half which goes in a very different direction than my own life did (or that I expected the book to go; I essentially got spoiled for the second half by an article describing the movie version of this story, which impacted my reading of it quite a bit). I spent most of the book bracing myself for what might happen to her next, betrayal or violence or intense loneliness or loss of self. I don't want to get too deep into the plot, but I found the ending to be both deeply affecting and beautiful and right, and yet also not enough: it stops at precisely the correct moment for this coming of age story to end, but I was desperate to know how her life continues. I could only read it as an adult needing to know how she turned out, and in some ways I know too much about the specific ways things were hard for queer youth in the '90s to content myself with the idea that it would simply get better for her. I think it could--it did for me and many of my friends--but I really wanted the narrative to tell me how, and that's not an answer this novel was going to provide. It's the right ending for this story, but not for me, I think.
Grade: B
The story is set in Montana in the early '90s, and begins just after Cameron's parents are killed in a car accident. One of her first reactions to this news is relief, because the big secret she's carrying around is that she and her female best friend have kissed, and now her parents will never know, and thank god. Cameron is three years older than I was during those years, and while I grew up in a very different area of the country, I definitely grew up in the same culture, both in terms of how her queerness interacted with the world and how she learned about what it meant to be a lesbian, and also in terms of what it generally felt like to be a teenager at that time, queer or straight. She has a summer girlfriend who's on a rival swim team, and that girlfriend teaches her about the specific counterculture that came out of the pacific northwest, and all I could think about was my personal equivalent of that girlfriend and how painfully real the whole thing felt.
"Painfully real" is probably a good way to describe the entire book, for me, even the second half which goes in a very different direction than my own life did (or that I expected the book to go; I essentially got spoiled for the second half by an article describing the movie version of this story, which impacted my reading of it quite a bit). I spent most of the book bracing myself for what might happen to her next, betrayal or violence or intense loneliness or loss of self. I don't want to get too deep into the plot, but I found the ending to be both deeply affecting and beautiful and right, and yet also not enough: it stops at precisely the correct moment for this coming of age story to end, but I was desperate to know how her life continues. I could only read it as an adult needing to know how she turned out, and in some ways I know too much about the specific ways things were hard for queer youth in the '90s to content myself with the idea that it would simply get better for her. I think it could--it did for me and many of my friends--but I really wanted the narrative to tell me how, and that's not an answer this novel was going to provide. It's the right ending for this story, but not for me, I think.
Grade: B
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