I'll Get There. It Better Be Worth the Trip.

While in high school trying to figure out and deal with being gay, I stumbled across this book in the school library. Without knowing that the book dealt with homosexuality, I checked it out and read it. And read it again. And again. This book was the first place I encountered homosexuality portrayed in anything other than an extremely negative way. It was the first step toward my acceptance of being gay. I am extremely grateful to the author and my school library for this book. I think the book is an important resource for school libraries and counselors. I don't remember the specifics of style, character development, etc., but I do know the effect the book had on my life.

Davy Reed is thirteen when the story begins and his grandmother dies, the grandmother who took care of him when his parents divorced and who gave him his beloved dog, Fred. Davy's heavy-drinking mother then takes him in to her Manhattan apartment and tells him he can't bring Fred. No way, Davy rebels, and eventually the mother relinquishes, but it's clear from her tone that Fred is only there on sufferance. Poor Davy has to live in a bedroom done up by an interior designer for a five-year old, with a teddy bear on his pillow. Then he has to start a new school and makes a "New York enemy" within his first two hours of his first day of school. However, this has unexpected consequences because a strange friendship develops between the two boys. I won't give away the rest of the plot but some pretty terrible things happen, and some wonderful ones too. I first read this book when I was about the age of Davy Reed, maybe a little bit older, and identified with him totally, even though my life was very different. Reading the book now, I'm overwhelmed by how talented Mr. John Donovan is as a writer. Had he pitched this book to an adult audience, I feel sure he would be celebrated as one of the best novelists of the 1960s. His toughness and lack of sentiment makes Richard Yates look like Danielle Steel. Simply put this novel, so shocking in its own day, is still a miracle of construction and discipline. If Donovan is still alive, I hope he continues to produce other great books.

Twenty years ago this crazy title tripped me up in my school library, and I took it home and read it in one sitting. I was caught to it because the boy in the story develops a confusing crush on his only friend, another boy, and I was coping with the same developing problem. I re-read the book several times in my school years, and was always moved and thrilled to find a writer that captured adolescence, its awkwardness and self-expression, its fears and its anticipations so perceptively. In all the years since, I've remembered the book with affection, but not until I travelled around the world last year, and spent an afternoon in the New York Public Library, had I been able to re-read it. As a boy, I didn't see the strong craft of the book, the depth and deftness of the characterizations, the careful handling of its issues. The book pulses with real emotion and life, and I realized, in my school library, and again,twenty years later in the New York Public Library, that I loved this book because, somehow, the author seemed to love me too.

This book is great for early adolescents who find that they feel "too close" to their best friend and question their feelings. The book portrays a boy growing up with an alcoholic mother and absent father in New York and his struggle after kissing his best friend. Recommended for any early teen.