"You have no idea how fast thing can change. You have no idea how suddenly years can pass and lives can end. Ignorance is not bliss. Bliss is knowing the full meaning of what you have been given."
David Levithan is a well-known name in YA fiction and he has written numerous contemporary classics including books he’s co-authored with other popular YA writers such as John Green (Will Grayson, Will Grayson) and Rachel Cohn (Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Noah and Ely’s No Kiss List and others). Eminently quotable and frequently writing stories which feature queer protagonists, Levithan, like Green, is a voice of the Tumblr generation whose quotes often find their way onto social media dashes, evoking the struggles, preoccupations and emotions of the postmillennial adolescent.
Two Boys Kissing was first published in 2013 and it covers a period of forty-eight hours, charting the stories of seven teens grappling with love, heartache, sexuality and gender identity. The story was loosely inspired by the story of two American teens Matty Daley and Bobby Canciello who kissed for thirty-two hours, thirty minutes and forty-seven seconds to break the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous kiss. Levithan notes that the stories of Craig and Harry (the ‘Two Boys Kissing’) are inspired by that story, although the characters are Levithan’s own creation. The notes go on to mention Tyler Clementi, a student whose college was close to Matty and Bobby’s, who killed himself four days after Matty and Bobby broke the World Record. The author notes this “juxtaposition informed the novel” although he does make clear that Clementi is not represented by any character in the book.
One of the features of Two Boys Kissing which sets it apart from other works of LGBT YA fiction, is the compelling, poetic and political voice. The narrators are a chorus of gay men who died of AIDS in the eighties, the “spirit-burden” the “shadow uncles” and “angel godfathers” carried by the queer youth of today. They watch the teens of the novel growing up in a very different world to their own and offer reminders of the past. Their reactions to the young characters in the novel combine powerful respect and joy with the pain of loss and homophobia experienced by the gay men of another generation: "We resent you. You astonish us." The unusual narrative voice lends a dreamlike, ethereal quality to Levithan’s deft prose as the voices of the chorus fluctuate from admiration to resentment, from sorrow to joy as they watch the lives of a disparate group of postmillennial teens unfold before their eyes.
For me, the narrative style is beautifully poetic without being overwrought. Although the book is undoubtedly an important one and a reminder of a recent history, it does not position itself as a text which is overly worthy or frustratingly didactic. It is the classic example of a contemporary YA novel which grapples with ‘issues’ of sexuality, coming out, love, loss, suicide, self-harm, heartbreak and gender without falling into the instructive and patronising category of ‘issue fiction’ which dominated early YA. The chorus are not preaching to today’s queer teens but rather reminding them how to dance. They urge LGBT youth to “never feel doomed” and observe a significant advancement in LGBT rights, whilst also clearly accepting that “just because it’s better now, doesn’t mean that it’s always good.”
Throughout the text there are echoes of a beautiful and painful past, from those who were “dreaming and loving and screwing” in the eighties. Although death and loss resonates through the narrative voices observing "from the rafters", the chorus are clear about the dangers of finding “commonality in our dying” as the “living part mattered more.” The chorus are not always aligned in their reaction to watching the teen stories unfold and there’s an honesty in the juxtaposition of celebration with anguish, of happiness with despair. The story of Ryan and Avery (“born a boy that the rest of the world saw as a girl”) finding one another across a dance floor at a gay prom because of their blue and pink hair is met with mixed reactions from the chorus: “Some of us applaud. Others look away because it hurts too much.”
Just as the chorus aren’t presented as having a collective experience save for a shared place and time in history, the teens of Two Boys Kissing do not share the same stories. The book is sometimes criticised for characters which lack depth as the 250 pages can’t possibly offer a complete story for each character. For me, the differing characters are a strength rather than a weakness and the brief insights we get into their wider stories are sufficiently fulfilling to enable the reader to connect with them and to appreciate all the nuances of queer male experience. The loose sketches of character suit the brief time period the story occupies, never straying into overly detailed exposition and keeping everything very much of the moment. The book plays with concepts of time, looking forward and looking back through short references to character backstory and fragmentary sentences which offer a brief insight into the future. This helps to evoke the sense of time being fleeting, which is further emphasised by the narrators reminiscing about a lost youth. Although the story does not provide long, descriptive character arcs, it gives snapshots which are rich with detail and colour. The story does not need to tell the full story of the lives of its seven characters. As the chorus observes, “it is enough to start the telling…to have the beginning and feel like it’s a beginning.”
The kiss takes on a multifaceted significance in the book, which emphasises freedom of expression. It becomes symbolic of the freedom to live without fear of censure or violence and the desire to be able to kiss in public is bound in to the stories of the present and the past. The narrators observe that whenever “two boys kiss, it opens up the world a little bit more.” The stories of the seven boys all entwine, paragraph after paragraph picking up the pace as the kiss nears its end. The narrative is bound together by Harry and Craigs kiss, while the world watches on.
Levithan’s book is one of my favourite pieces of LGBT YA fiction for the unique narrative style and the way it deftly connects past and present with an undeniable hope and resilience which runs throughout the story. The use of second person finds the narrators speaking to the reader as well as the teens of the story and they urge that we “live to meet your future selves...to make more than dust.” The story is both poignant and uplifting, fresh and yet deeply nostalgic. Two different generations of boys kissing collide, and the book offers a sanctuary of sorts for the postmillennial queer teen – for the “comfortable misfits, torn rebels, the fearful and the brave.”
One of the features of Two Boys Kissing which sets it apart from other works of LGBT YA fiction, is the compelling, poetic and political voice. The narrators are a chorus of gay men who died of AIDS in the eighties, the “spirit-burden” the “shadow uncles” and “angel godfathers” carried by the queer youth of today. They watch the teens of the novel growing up in a very different world to their own and offer reminders of the past. Their reactions to the young characters in the novel combine powerful respect and joy with the pain of loss and homophobia experienced by the gay men of another generation: "We resent you. You astonish us." The unusual narrative voice lends a dreamlike, ethereal quality to Levithan’s deft prose as the voices of the chorus fluctuate from admiration to resentment, from sorrow to joy as they watch the lives of a disparate group of postmillennial teens unfold before their eyes.
For me, the narrative style is beautifully poetic without being overwrought. Although the book is undoubtedly an important one and a reminder of a recent history, it does not position itself as a text which is overly worthy or frustratingly didactic. It is the classic example of a contemporary YA novel which grapples with ‘issues’ of sexuality, coming out, love, loss, suicide, self-harm, heartbreak and gender without falling into the instructive and patronising category of ‘issue fiction’ which dominated early YA. The chorus are not preaching to today’s queer teens but rather reminding them how to dance. They urge LGBT youth to “never feel doomed” and observe a significant advancement in LGBT rights, whilst also clearly accepting that “just because it’s better now, doesn’t mean that it’s always good.”
Throughout the text there are echoes of a beautiful and painful past, from those who were “dreaming and loving and screwing” in the eighties. Although death and loss resonates through the narrative voices observing "from the rafters", the chorus are clear about the dangers of finding “commonality in our dying” as the “living part mattered more.” The chorus are not always aligned in their reaction to watching the teen stories unfold and there’s an honesty in the juxtaposition of celebration with anguish, of happiness with despair. The story of Ryan and Avery (“born a boy that the rest of the world saw as a girl”) finding one another across a dance floor at a gay prom because of their blue and pink hair is met with mixed reactions from the chorus: “Some of us applaud. Others look away because it hurts too much.”
Just as the chorus aren’t presented as having a collective experience save for a shared place and time in history, the teens of Two Boys Kissing do not share the same stories. The book is sometimes criticised for characters which lack depth as the 250 pages can’t possibly offer a complete story for each character. For me, the differing characters are a strength rather than a weakness and the brief insights we get into their wider stories are sufficiently fulfilling to enable the reader to connect with them and to appreciate all the nuances of queer male experience. The loose sketches of character suit the brief time period the story occupies, never straying into overly detailed exposition and keeping everything very much of the moment. The book plays with concepts of time, looking forward and looking back through short references to character backstory and fragmentary sentences which offer a brief insight into the future. This helps to evoke the sense of time being fleeting, which is further emphasised by the narrators reminiscing about a lost youth. Although the story does not provide long, descriptive character arcs, it gives snapshots which are rich with detail and colour. The story does not need to tell the full story of the lives of its seven characters. As the chorus observes, “it is enough to start the telling…to have the beginning and feel like it’s a beginning.”
The kiss takes on a multifaceted significance in the book, which emphasises freedom of expression. It becomes symbolic of the freedom to live without fear of censure or violence and the desire to be able to kiss in public is bound in to the stories of the present and the past. The narrators observe that whenever “two boys kiss, it opens up the world a little bit more.” The stories of the seven boys all entwine, paragraph after paragraph picking up the pace as the kiss nears its end. The narrative is bound together by Harry and Craigs kiss, while the world watches on.
Levithan’s book is one of my favourite pieces of LGBT YA fiction for the unique narrative style and the way it deftly connects past and present with an undeniable hope and resilience which runs throughout the story. The use of second person finds the narrators speaking to the reader as well as the teens of the story and they urge that we “live to meet your future selves...to make more than dust.” The story is both poignant and uplifting, fresh and yet deeply nostalgic. Two different generations of boys kissing collide, and the book offers a sanctuary of sorts for the postmillennial queer teen – for the “comfortable misfits, torn rebels, the fearful and the brave.”