What We Left Behind
by Robin Talley
HarlequinTeen
Robin Talley lives in Washington DC with her wife and writes fiction for young adults that usually has lesbian, gay, bisexual or transsexual characters. In her latest book she introduces two girls who meet and fall hopelessly in love at the junior high school dance at the Martha Jefferson Academy for Young Women in Washington DC.
Toni was a member of the Gay Straight Alliance and put pressure on the school administration to allow her to take a female partner to the dance … even though it was just her best friend Renee. Gretchen had just relocated from New York and her parents thought she should go to the dance and even organised a nephew of a friend to take her.
Gretchen’s life was turned upside down when she saw a girl in top hat and suspenders smiling at her. The two were inseparable for the next two years and never even had a fight. This changed when Toni goes to Harvard and Gretchen returns to New York – at the opposite end of the country.
Promises are made and broken as both young women search for a sense of identity. Genderqueer Toni spends time with a group of transgender students and thinks about changing pronouns. Meanwhile, Gretchen feels identified by her relationship with her absent girlfriend and wonders where she fits in Toni’s new life.
This book is certainly aimed at teenagers with the strongest profanities being ‘darn it all to heck’ and ‘oh for gosh sake’. Conservative America seems to have quite a population of gay and questioning transsexual youth in its universities and while almost all of the parents hold onto narrow-minded values; many of their offspring are sorting out where they stand on the sexual spectrum.
The dialogue-based novel has too much teenage angst for my liking but then again I’m not a teenager. It is a difficult topic to navigate and the many philosophical discussions between the characters should provide a stepping off point to discussions about transitioning youth.
Lezly Herbert
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