I chose this book as part of a 30 Days of Pride Book Review project. This is that review:
The problem with Aristotle Mendoza’s life was that it wasn't his idea. The book opens with Ari, a fifteen year old kid, starting out the summer of 1987, bristling with the very normal teenage feelings of boredom and abject misery. Then at the community pool Ari meets Dante, a kid who, to Ari’s own mind, is completely his opposite. In fact, Ari doesn't think Dante is like anyone else he has ever met: A boy who is crazy about his parents, a boy who cried over the death of a bird, a boy who believed he could discover the secrets of the universe by studying the stars. Ari takes the reader along with him through this summer of friendship, and then into a confusing winter and then right back out on the other side into the summer again. It is a novel of transition, from boyhood to adulthood from strangers to friendship, from feeling inscrutable to understanding.
This is a beautiful book.
There is a staccato almost poetic rhythm to the prose, each chapter is a sparse stanza that transforms into a deeper emotional truth. This novel just feels like reading poetry. I liked holding the words in my head. I don't usually feel that way about young adult novels.
And I liked Ari. I liked him as a human. You know how you can like a character, for all kinds of reasons, without liking them as a human being? I liked Ari as a human being. I liked his self-deprecating narrative voice, his humor, his view of the world. I liked the person he presented as and the person he was becoming. Which I think is important,because, “becoming”, or more acutely existing in that space of transition was, to me, one of the strongest themes in this novel.
Early on in the story Ari is re-reading a journal entry he wrote, which states, “ I don't like being fifteen. I didn't like being fourteen. I didn't like being thirteen. I didn't like being twelve. I didn't like being eleven. Ten was good…” Ari hates being a teenage guy, he hates the changes his body is going through, he hates other guys and he is afraid of becoming a jerk like the 18-year-old lifeguards at the pool. Because, maybe life was just a series of phases, as his mother suggested, and in a couple years he’d be just like them.
He's worried that, in growing up, he will become a different person.
A lot of times, in life, we accept it as a basic truism that people don't change. That there is no point trying to change someone or waiting around for someone to change because a person is who they are and people can't change. And maybe people don't change dramatically...or, you know, change who they are at their cores, but there is a very poetic truth to the idea that we all exist in a state of flux. That we are always in the process of becoming someone else, and that that process doesn't end with becoming an adult, who is no longer angry, confused, or capable of making big mistakes.
Adulthood as a process that is never quite finished is a powerful theme.
I really liked this novel, so the only thing I'm going to put in the negative column is the same old petty typo complaint. Typos are a fact of life, but I hate seeing them in published works… and I'll leave it at that.
So...Do I recommend this novel? Yes, without hesitation, I do. You should read this beautiful book.
All that's left are my scales for this project.
I've dubbed my first scale the Queer Counterculture Visibility Scale….Which, I made up, and placement onto which is based on my arbitrary whims.
Aristotle and Dante are both Mexican-American boys, struggling with what it means to be a part of that culture. In fact almost everyone in this book is Mexican-American and defining what that means to them. But I liked that one character pointed out to another, on the subject of whether or not “Real Mexicans” liked to kiss boys, that liking boys was not an American invention.
There isn't an in depth exploration of sexuality here, because that's not what this book is really about, nobody is getting out the Kinsey scale and weighing their attractions. So I can't speak to whether it includes the possibility of bisexuality, but it doesn't exclude it, which I can appreciate. There was also a lesbian couple as peripheral characters. I'm going to put it at:
3 out of 5 stars
Gay is the most visible letter in the LGBT acronym, but at least we got to enjoy some cultural diversity, and discussion of class issues as relates to that culture.
The second scale, I’ve just been calling the Genre Expectation scale. Basically I judge whether or not I feel this book went above and beyond the typical expectations for its genre. This is, for all intents and purposes, a young adult, coming of age story, of which I’ve read a hundred. But there was something moving and poetic about the way this particular story was wrought. The character growth from seeming so much a child in the beginning to seeming so much an adult in the end and the slow, bending, poetic way it got from point A to point B was moving in a way few YA books tend to capture. It expected more from its audience then most YA books, I think. I'm putting it at:
5 out of 5 stars
It exceeded my expectations for the genre.
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I bet you could sometimes find all of the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand.Highlighted by 5,067 Kindle readers- To be careful with people and with words was a rare and beautiful thing.Highlighted by 4,505 Kindle readers
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M.E. Byrd
4.5 stars. “Everyone was always becoming someone else.”
Reviewed in Germany on June 4, 2023
