All About Lulu, by Jonathan Evison

Excerpt
First, I'm going to give you all the Copperfield crap, and I'm not going to apologize for any of it, not one paragraph, so if you're not interested in how I came to see the future, or how I came to understand that the biggest truth in my life was a lie, or, for that matter, how I parlayed my distaste for hot dogs into an '84 RX-7 and a new self-concept, do us both a favor, and just stop now.

A Brief Summary
In the wake of his mother's death, as his bodybuilding brethren pump themselves to Hulkish proportions, weak-eyed vegetarian Will Miller stops growing altogether—until the day his father remarries a relentlessly kind grief counselor, delivering Will a troubled stepsister who soon becomes his confessor, companion, and heart's only desire. But when Lulu returns from cheerleading camp the summer of her fourteenth year, she inexplicably begins to push Will away, forcing him to look elsewhere for meaning. (Wikipedia.org)

My Thoughts
Last summer, I was working as a script-reader for a small independent managing firm, and my job had occasional... lags. To keep myself occupied, I would trawl through the electronic script submission archives and just dip into whatever I found there, whether it was a shitty romcom, a psychological thriller, or a Dickens adaptation. One day, I found this book.

To say "I couldn't put it down" might, strictly speaking, be inaccurate, since it was, after all, an ebook, but the sentiment is the same. Though at the heart of All About Lulu is Will and Lulu's love story, the book is fleshed out by wonderfully realized characters (and I am a Dickens fan, so we know I'm a sucker for side characters), who skirt the line of too quirky and who surprise you by suddenly becoming heart-wrenching. Will's father Big Bill is a good example -- a washed-up Mr. Universe wannabe who worships at the altar of meat, he's an easy comic character, but there's something sad and touching about his frustrated hopes and thwarted relationship with his sons. The whole book is like that, alternating seamlessly between the truly ridiculous and very funny and the sucker-punch-you-in-the-stomach tragic.

The near-Oedipal tragedy of the whole thing is probably what prevents this book from being in my very upper echelon, but that is a personal taste issue (I'm a big sap, really) and in no way detracts from what is a deftly realized, very touching, and very original novel.

The Gay
Okay, so I kicked things off with a pretty damn heterosexual book, so sue me. The big story here is Will's epic Lulu-love, no mistake. That said, there is enough queerness to be found in the side characters to keep me interested (hint: it's not the one you think it is -- unless you're like me, in which case it is exactly the one you think it is) and the book overall is very interested in love and sexuality. And, of course, Will and Lulu's romance is unconventional enough to be a bit queer in its own way. Don't go to this book expecting high fabulosity levels -- I'd place this squarely in the inoffensive, but hardly likely to revolutionize gay representation category -- but if you like unconventional love stories -- and don't we all -- this one is very worth a read.

Star Ratings
Overall: ★★★ 1/2
Queer Content: ★★