Nina Lacour You Know Me Well

'You Know Me Well' by Nina LaCour and David Levithan

Writer: Michael Waters

June ix, 2016

You Know Me Well is about a rainbow alliance, and Kate and Mark are at its center. Both gay high schoolhouse seniors, Kate and Mark are inappreciably acquainted—though they sit near each other in calculus, they have never spoken. Which makes information technology all the more bad-mannered when, on the first nighttime of San Francisco Pride, Kate sees Mark competing in an underwear dance competition (long story).

Kate is an creative person who is broken-hearted most going to higher; Mark is a baseball game histrion who is in love with Ryan, his best-friend-whom-he-sometimes-has-sex-with-but-who-is-not-actually-his-boyfriend. Both of them have big plans for the first dark of Pride: Kate is about to meet Violet, a daughter who has lived in Europe for the past twenty months and who Kate'due south all-time friend has decided to set up with Kate. Through their mutual friend, Kate and Violet have slowly fallen for each other. Meanwhile, Marking wants this to exist the night that he and Ryan finally confess their dear—he is itching for Ryan to see him as more than than just a friend he sometimes experiments with. But both Kate and Marking terminate upwardly disastrously disappointed. Right before meeting Violet, Kate panics and leaves; Mark, instead of spending the nighttime with Ryan, is forced to picket equally his all-time friend dances with a tattooed college boy.

To escape their own issues, Kate and Mark turn to each other. Their nighttime takes them to a party with Kate'southward drunk friends, to a body of water lion viewing at Pier 39, to a mansion with a famous photographer who makes them Instagram famous. In the process, they share their fears: Kate worries she has ruined her chance with Violet, while Mark hopes Ryan won't discover a real boyfriend.

Thus begins Kate'due south and Mark's very queer friendship ("our ain rainbow alliance," equally Mark and so aptly puts it). Over the side by side week, they navigate relationships, arguments with friends, Cyberspace celebrity, anxieties nigh college, LGBTQ+ poetry slams, and an fine art studio that blasts EDM and features inappropriate c-words spelled out in LED lights.

Their dynamic will likely be familiar to many readers. Ask queer high school students what has influenced them the most, and you'll exist surprised past how many answer "community." Whether they are found in person in GSAs or online on Twitter and Tumblr, friendships of this kind have had a profound impact on many LGBTQ+ teens. Often, community is how we express ourselves, how we explore who nosotros are and who we desire to become.

This is what is revolutionary nearly You Know Me Well, a novel fittingly co-written past ii giants in the realm of queer YA—Nina LaCour (Hold Still, Everything Leads to You lot) and David Levithan (Every Twenty-four hour period, Boy Meets Boy). You Know Me Well is one of only a few YA novels where queer teens are friends with other queer teens, where our culture and our insecurities and our very bad jokes (shouldn't the opposite of "directly" exist something cool, similar "scenic"?) are on full display. This celebration of community transcends Kate and Mark—most every named character is queer, and unapologetically so. Their relationships, of form, are imperfect: they fight, and they weep, and sometimes they hate each other. But they are us. Our world. Our parade.

At times, the fast stride of Yous Know Me Well comes at the expense of authenticity: characters fall in and out of romances and friendships without warning. (Mark and Kate, for instance, develop an intimate connection the second they meet.) Many of the relationships could have been ameliorate fleshed out. But this, ultimately, does not detract from the magic of the novel: to read a volume that is so proudly a love letter to the queer community is sure to make endless readers feel more than confident well-nigh who they are.

Throughout the novel, only Ryan ever appears insecure well-nigh his sexuality. To the rest of the characters, being queer is ordinary—only on occasion exercise they worry about being different from the balance of society. Even so when Kate and Violet kiss for the kickoff time on a public sidewalk, they are met with applause. "Happy Pride!" someone shouts. It is jarring to read: afterwards so many pages in which same-gender attraction is unremarkable, here is a group of people treating it every bit a rare occurrence. But the scene is a reminder that existence queer in public spaces remains a social argument—one that is increasingly well-received, yes, but a social argument nonetheless. Though Mark and Kate meet their sexualities equally unremarkable, to the rest of the globe it is something to stop and stare at. This contrast parallels the novel itself: for what is likely to be a widely read YA novel to feature such a large cast of queer characters is a revolutionary act, only few readers will retrieve this as they turn each folio. No special attention is drawn to the fact that almost all of the characters are queer—their love, their friendships, their customs are presented wholly without shame. It's a wink at the reader—yeah, it says, we're here to stay.

You Know Me Well
Past Nina LaCour and David Levithan
St. Martin'due south Griffin
Hardcover, 9781250098641, 256 pp.
June 2016

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Source: https://lambdaliterary.org/2016/06/you-know-me-well-by-nina-lacour-and-david-levithan/

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