Just right.
I have terrible timing. So it's always with a little bit of astonishment when the stars seem to align and miraculously, the pieces fit together and, as in this case, I read the right book at the right time.
I've just finished David Levithan's Wide Awake and before I rave and quote this book, I have to say how much I've enjoyed a couple of other books he's written, Boy Meets Boy and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, written with Rachel Cohn. Levithan's novels have moments of sheer beauty in his writing and his storytelling is easy, flowing, and unrushed. I admired him as a writer and his newest book allows me to heap more praise on him.
Wide Awake takes place in the near future--a gay Jew has just been elected President of the United States. Duncan is a gay boy who has helped on the campaign in his home state of New Jersey and when the election is challenged by the governor in the state of Kansas, the President-elect calls on his supporters to go to Kansas. So Duncan and his friends go.
There is more background to this future, and Duncan explains it rather well in this paragraph:
"Some members of Congress had wanted to start a Second New Deal to get unemployed people back to work, restoring some of our national parkland and renovating schools and libraries. But instead the President started his War to End All Wars, and a lot of the unemployed men and women got shipped away to 'defend democracy' and 'defeat evil.' It was as if the President had decided that superpowers needed to follow the same plotlines as superheroes, that in order to be good you had to be actively, constantly fighting evil. So he sent our troops to Africa, which had been so debilitated by AIDS and other diseases as we watched, and to the Middle East, trying yet again to create the area in our own image. He left Europe alone because they were enough like us. And he left China alone because China would have bombed us to oblivion if we'd tried anything. The plan was poorly drawn, and as a result the WTEAW was drawn out and drawn out and drawn out, until enough people had died and the economy had recovered enough for the President to declare a victory only he believed." (page 116)
I watched the State of the Union this evening, which is why I found finishing this book so appropriately timed.
I've just finished David Levithan's Wide Awake and before I rave and quote this book, I have to say how much I've enjoyed a couple of other books he's written, Boy Meets Boy and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, written with Rachel Cohn. Levithan's novels have moments of sheer beauty in his writing and his storytelling is easy, flowing, and unrushed. I admired him as a writer and his newest book allows me to heap more praise on him.
Wide Awake takes place in the near future--a gay Jew has just been elected President of the United States. Duncan is a gay boy who has helped on the campaign in his home state of New Jersey and when the election is challenged by the governor in the state of Kansas, the President-elect calls on his supporters to go to Kansas. So Duncan and his friends go.
There is more background to this future, and Duncan explains it rather well in this paragraph:
"Some members of Congress had wanted to start a Second New Deal to get unemployed people back to work, restoring some of our national parkland and renovating schools and libraries. But instead the President started his War to End All Wars, and a lot of the unemployed men and women got shipped away to 'defend democracy' and 'defeat evil.' It was as if the President had decided that superpowers needed to follow the same plotlines as superheroes, that in order to be good you had to be actively, constantly fighting evil. So he sent our troops to Africa, which had been so debilitated by AIDS and other diseases as we watched, and to the Middle East, trying yet again to create the area in our own image. He left Europe alone because they were enough like us. And he left China alone because China would have bombed us to oblivion if we'd tried anything. The plan was poorly drawn, and as a result the WTEAW was drawn out and drawn out and drawn out, until enough people had died and the economy had recovered enough for the President to declare a victory only he believed." (page 116)
I watched the State of the Union this evening, which is why I found finishing this book so appropriately timed.
posted by austentatious at 8:26 PM
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