Select a book at random from your bookshop's young-adult section and, if it's not a Harry Potter look-alike, chances are very, very good that it will be some take on a girl falling in love with a boy — a staple trope of YA literature. Harder to find but increasing in number, thankfully, are tales of first love among lesbians. And then there's the rarest genre of them all: love stories about two teenage boys.
What They Always Tell Us, the debut novel from Vanderbilt graduate Martin Wilson, is a welcome contribution to the final category. The romance here is wrapped in an authentic portrayal of contemporary, upper-middle-class teenage life, and in its portrait of two brothers, the novel also offers an uplifting look at the challenges to — and triumphs of — family loyalty.
Set in the author's hometown of Tuscaloosa, Ala., What They Always Tell Us opens in a bleak season for high-school junior Alex Donaldson, who drank Pine-Sol in a confused, depressed and inebriated moment at a back-to-school party and has been a pariah among his peers ever since. Alex was drifting away from his buddies — a frankly loathsome group of privileged and insensitive teens — even before the incident, but now he finds himself thoroughly cast out, the object of their whispers and mean laughter. Everybody else at school gives him a wide berth, too, including his older brother, James, a smart and popular tennis player who feels betrayed and angered by his brother's mistake.
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Excellent choice! Can't wait!!!
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