Book rec: The difference between you and me by Madeleine George

 

Just so you don’t start thinking I only read cranky nonfiction. . . .

I raved about George’s first novel, LOOKS, when it came out a couple of years or so ago.  This one is every bit as good, similar in that it turns a cold sharp eye on the dynamics of high school and the frequently screwed up lives of high school students, but admirably different in the particular aspects of dysfunction, cluelessless, idealism, betrayal and hope that George makes her story out of this time.

Also, it’s funny.  And . . . it has some of the hottest kissing scenes in it I have ever read.*  Oh, and . . . ?  They’re girl on girl.

I hope I’ve now got your attention.

It’s told in alternating viewpoints, Jesse and Emily.  It begins with Jesse:

Jesse is in the sophomore hall girls’ bathroom, the farthest stall from the door, one huge, scuffed fisherman’s boot propped up on the toilet seat so she can balance her backpack on her knee and rifle through it.  She’s looking for the masking tape that she totally, totally put in here this morning, she’s positive, she has a perfect picture-memory of swiping it out of the designated masking-tape cubby in her mother’s rolltop desk in the den and dropping it into her backpack, the big pocket, right here she totally put it here where it is where is it the bell’s about to ring—

The plan is to wait until the pep rally is called and then paper the entire school with the latest draft of her manifesto. . . .

To have begun Chapter One, you will have read through the front matter, which begins:

THE NOLAW MANIFESTO

Demanding

Justice now!

For all

Weirdos, Freaks,

Queer kids, Revolutionaries,

Nerds, Dweebs

Misfits, Loudmouths,

Rapunzels Trapped in their Towers

Trolls Trapped under Their Bridges,

Animals Abused by Their Masters

Detentionites,

Monsters

And Saints.

By the

National Organization to Liberate

All Weirdos,

Or,

NOLAW

 

I’d vote for that.**

* * *

* And I mean kissing.  Not graphic, not relentlessly iterated body-part sex, not soft (or for that matter hard) porn—kissing.

** I’d like to say that I wish I’d known Jesse in high school, but we would never have said a word to each other.  Sigh.