Published in: January-February 2014 issue.
Two Boys Kissing
by David Levithan
Alfred A. Knopf. 200 pages, $16.99
IT HAS been just over ten years since David Levithan tossed a hot pink monkey wrench into the machinery of young adult fiction with the publiction of Boy Meets Boy, a full-on romantic comedy complete with a happy ending for its two male protagonists. Prior to that, any novel involving gay teenagers was more likely to end up at a funeral or hospital bedside. Boy Meets Boy’s originality derived from how breezily the narrative served up its high school setting, where the quarterback and homecoming queen were one and the same and went by the name Infinite Darlene. Once this book got into the water supply, things slowly began to mutate for the better.
