Anna's Reviews > Carry On

As I said on Twitter about 2/3 of the way through the novel, "Rainbow Rowell has taken all that is glorious about queer fanfic and distilled it into a printed book I can cuddle in my hands." One of my favorite aspects of queer fanfiction is it's critical stance not only toward heteronormativity but also toward other normative scripts in our culture. Fanfiction is often so compelling to me because it interrogates its source material with love and substantive reworkings of what is assumed in the original story arc. Carry On is an original work of fantasy, in dialogue with many well know fantasy and non-fantasy scripts beginning with the Harry Potter and British school stories and rippling outward from there. And it teases out the politics and absences of those narratives in a way that manages to be both realistic (its characters live in present-day, imperfect Britain) and utopian: it's main characters are politically-conscious, struggling to call out homophobia, sexism, racism, and rewrite the social narratives for themselves. Rather than displace racism, for example, onto aliens or fantastical races, it deals with human-level inequality. One of its central characters fears throughout that his father will be more upset that he's gay than that he has impolitic magical abilities. The central romance is sweet and undeniably physical, and although the main couple are both boys there is a supporting cast that includes a wide variety of kickass girls and women. This is the first of Rowell's books I've read and I admit to being utterly, fannishly smitten. Here's hoping for more in the same 'verse eventually!