I’ve lost lifelong friends over these sorts of disagreements (that’s a long, sad story) and felt alienated from my cousins who serve for our differences of opinion on the matter. As someone who has had several friends and family who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, yet is one of those peace-loving liberals who protested the invasion of Iraq, this kind of tension at the beginning of the book hooked me right away. The story opens with Matt at school trying to ignore the taunts of another student who is part of the pro-peace movement and walks around wearing shirts that say “Bush lied” and such. It’s a tough issue, and I’m glad to have both options.
This is a book that will appeal to lots of kids, whether or not they have an explicit interest in queer themes, and is an opportunity to expose readers to these ideas in an organic way. When I heard Brian Katcher speak at the YA Literature Symposium last week, he related how adamant his editor was that the reveal that the love interest in Almost Perfect was a transgendered character be a total surprise, yet the book was marketed and labeled as queer when it was published, which while making it easier to find if someone was explicitly looking for a book with these issues, probably alienated some readers who were put off by that sort of content, but might have ultimately enjoyed the book.
I also love that this book isn’t being explicitly marketed as a LGBTQ book and that there’s no spoilers on the jacket. Even young men who have not experienced the devastating loss of a brother dying during combat will relate to this character. Kokie explores grief, social mores, and self-discovery in a provocative first novel.
With compassion, humor, and a compelling narrative voice, E. What he learns challenges him to stand up to his father, honor his brother’s memory, and take charge of his own life. But as Matt searches for answers about T.J.’s death, he faces a shocking revelation about T.J.’s life that suggests he may not have known T.J. T.J.’s gone, but Matt can’t shake the feeling that if only he could get his hands on his brother’s stuff from Iraq, he’d be able to make sense of his death. This book gets you in your heart with its very simple and real story.Įver since his brother, T.J., was killed in Iraq, Matt feels like he’s been sleepwalking through life - failing classes, getting into fights, and avoiding his dad’s lectures about following in his brother’s footsteps. I was crying in a good way, but perhaps not a socially acceptable one. Personal Effects took me a while read, not because I wasn’t interested, but because I was basically sobbing the whole way through it.
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