Note: I read this book in 2008 and then revisited it after the election when I got into a discussion of why I disliked it with a friend. The time away didn’t warm my heart to it at all. This review reflects my opinion after the discussion, whereas my first was review was more to the tune of “WHY IS THIS SO AWFUL?” I, at least, think it explains my issues more.

Returning to Renay-reads-all-the-gay-YA-novels-she-can-find–to-scope-out-the-competition portion of Let’s Get Literate! 2008, I had a moment of bemusement when I finished this story. Wide Awake reminds me of that little kid who just knows he can get the square peg in the circle hole if he just keeps banging on it.

Don’t get me wrong: Levithan is still a good writer and he still writes about things I think need to be written about. The story here about these boys and their future and Duncan’s worries as he watches things he believed in fall apart were just lost because I spent so much time enraged at the politics. I even agree with Levithan about most of this stuff!

I think it’s safe to say that I am too jaded, cynical and bitter for this book to work on me. It felt fake. I get that Levithan enjoys gay utopias and optimism and hope but this story was kind of like eating five of those pies at once. I can’t buy into it anymore. The timing of the release of this book just gets me so riled up, too. Sure, YA can be political, but there’s no reason to bash people in the face with it.

Places where Levithan lost me: non-shopping malls (I cannot suspend my disbelief this far, I am sorry), demonizing the opposition while preaching against that opposition demonizing our heroes, crammed so full of diversity that it was a joke. I felt like I might vomit rainbows; I’m not against a good character sketch once in awhile, but yes! America is DIVERSE! It was like a game of musical chairs, every time the music stopped we got a new minority individual, a inspiring speech, and sometimes there would even be some character development. I look over the scenes with Duncan watching his girlfriends have issues and smile fondly.

However, mostly it was just inspiring speeches. I should use scare quotes there, because I simply wasn’t inspired. I was bored; I knew what was going to be said already. Maybe too much time in gay rights work.

It’s too much, all at once. The story is set in some nebulous future where a gay man is good enough and the society changed enough for him to get on the ticket, when we’re sitting in 2009 and I watch racism ruin friendships and various forms of media and tell me my president isn’t actually black because he looks white, even though he identifies as black? It started in 1862, for varying degrees of beginnings, that’s 147 years. 147 years later and we finally have our first black president. Right now, in many states, in my state, gay people can’t even get married and the Supreme Court hasn’t even gone near it yet. This book is set too close to our time. That’s what it boils down to: I cannot buy the premise of this book at all based on the numbers. The numbers don’t crunch and I have given up on urban sprawl and education to speed up the process of changing minds. Maybe after March and the decision in California in announced I will reevaluate.

The opposition are still awful people, characterized like big meanies. Listen, I live in the South. I know some of these meanies, meanies that will have my gay friends over for dinner and be perfectly nice and then go vote and pass an amendment banning gays from adopting. This book took all the bad parts of these people I know and made villains. Excuse me, they’re not evil. They’re a product of their times and minds don’t always change fast, even with wars and disease and poverty. People who are not okay with gay people are not evil because they are afraid of what redefining their worlds means and it does a disservice to paint them with that brush, because it takes away their humanity—the very thing most of our biggest detractors do (don’t forget, gay people fuck goats). It’s pretty hypocritical for Levithan to write a book about uniting humanity but save a little bigoted piece so there could be some drama! It’s wishful thinking and wishful thinking doesn’t tell a good story. It reads like an AU fanfic of election 2000. I do not know what Levithan intended with this book but it missed for me. I hope other people get more out of it.

Final point: I think this is an important book, because it shows where too much optimism can lead: imagining a future that’s impossible with our past, just to critique our present and oh, have a pastede on gay romance.

I’m sorry, David Levithan! Um. I love your co-authored stuff? *mourns*

1. bookboy.net
2. bookshelves of doom
3. Frenetic Reader
4. I’m a Reading Fool
5. Swarm of Beasts