“FIND ME A BOOK”: A splendid YA LGBTQ book you might like
THE BOOK: Forgive Me If I’ve Told You This Before by Karelia Stetz-Waters
CATEGORIZATION: YA novel / lesbian coming-of-age
IN A SENTENCE: In 1989 Oregon, witty and honest Triinu comes of age, comes out, and struggles with bullies, religion, and first-love heartbreak.
WHY YOU’D LIKE IT: You know how sometimes you’re reading a book, and every other sentence sends a tiny dart of bittersweet recognition into your heart and/or brain? That’s how it is with this little gem. Stetz-Waters pulls off something really special here: she takes a familiar story-skeleton and fleshes it out with characters that feel both specific and relatable–so much so that the book becomes a page-turner even though it’s character-driven. Your heart breaks for Triinu as she deals with the agonies of unrequited love, intolerance, and a painfully recognizable high-school bully. But you never pity her, because you see the outline of her future self waving on the opposite shore, and you know the fumblings and disappointments are necessary stepping-stones.
Seriously, I can’t believe more people aren’t talking about this one, because it’s so funny, so candid, and so magnificently written. It’s the kind of writing that blurbs and endorsements like to call “lyrical,” but don’t let that scare you off. The language isn’t beautiful for the sake of beauty; every image and metaphor hits its target with dead-on precision. (After Triinu receives a college acceptance letter, an ordinary spring day turns magical: “I wanted to breathe it in until every cell in my body was as clean and deliberate as the air between the green fields, the white-bottomed clouds, and the blue, blue sky. The world was so big and perfect, and I was heading out into it.”)
THE PERFECT DAY TO READ IT: A warm rainy summer Sunday, after you’ve been perusing your high-school journals and aching on behalf of Teen You. This book is episodic and feels more like a memoir written with the clarity of hindsight than a story you experience shoulder-to-shoulder with the narrator. That’s not by any means a drawback–I’m just saying, if you’re craving present-tense, plot-driven YA, you might want to save this one for another day.
FAVORITE LINE: This took me forever to narrow down, because there are reams of quotable lines in this book. But here’s a passage I really love. This is Triinu spending a wonderful-slash-terrible evening with her friend/unrequited love Ursula:
“A Slurpee? Oh, prosaic world! How was I to say, ‘You are the burning light of my heart,’ to a girl drinking a Slurpee? And what if I felt compelled to buy a Slurpee myself? Could I say, ‘Without you I am nothing,’ if in my hand I held a Slurpee, the spade-shaped straw making a little wheek-wheek sound as I pushed it in and out of the lid?”
All this AND there’s an awesome late-eighties playlist in the back. GO GET THIS BOOK, readerfriends. And tell me if you hugged it at the end like I did.
