Dole, Mayra Lazara (2008). Down to the Bone. NY: HarperTeen. 367 pages.
When seventeen-year-old Laura’s mother discovers that Laura has been in a two-year relationship with a girl, she kicks her daughter out of her Miami home on the same day the girl’s teachers expel Laura from her Catholic school. Fortunately, Laura’s best friend Soli and her mother are only too happy to take the newly orphaned girl in, and, when Laura’s girlfriend in sent to Cuba by her family, Soli and company become Laura’s new family.
Set in Miami and equally devoted to describing Cuban youth and the Cuban gay scene, this first novel by Dole is way too long. In the course of the book’s nearly 400 pages, Laura questions her sexuality, dates a guy, kisses a genderqueer dude, crushes on a girl, swears off love, tries to reunite with her mother, and navigates an unfamiliar gay scene. Meanwhile, practically every single day of the year this book spans is captured on the page–not diary style, that would be too easy–so that by the time Laura does end up with the hot chica she met in, like, the first 100 pages of the book, I found it hard to care.
You know me: I’m a champion for GLBTQ YA literature; however, I have to draw some literary lines because nobody else seems capable of doing so! This novel was too ambitious and suffered for it. While Dole could have crafted an intriguing story about being gay in a Cuban-American enclave with a distinct set of values–some progressive, and some not–this novel tried to tackle absolutely everything and failed. I know you’re not supposed to write a review of the book you think the critiqued novel could have or should have been, but, in this case, it’s nearly impossible to consider the long-ass and convoluted book for what it is.
Here’s the thing: in Jenkins and Cart’s The Heart Has its Reasons (a bibliography and history of GLBTQ young adult literature), the authors describe three “phases” of gay visibility in young adult literature. Each of these “phases” is characterized by a distinct way of handling the GLBTQ character and his or her situation. Older books are typically coming out stories meant to make gay characters visible, while newer books tend to situate the GLBTQ character within or at least near a queer or supportive community. Down to the Bone attempts to do it all: there’s the coming out story (the first 100 pages), the assimilation piece (the second 100 pages) and the eventual recognition of community (the last 100 page). It’s like Dole read Cart and Jenkins’ book and thought it was an instruction manual, rather than a description of narrative flux. Dude, this was just too much to handle.
Hi. I was looking for info for teens who’ll be doing a reading of Down to the Bone today at a lesbian shelter for LGBTQ kids who get kicked out of the house and have nowhere to go. these kids LOVE Down to the Bone and relate totally to it. I was SO surprised to read your review and wondered if we read the same book? I strongly dissagree with your review on the novel. As a Cuban lesbian, I and my other friends who have read it, loved it! We couldn’t put it down and are hoping for a sequel. Dole’s book has everything I as a Latina could not find in any LGBTQ literature. Having experienced similar pain as Laura, the main character in the novel, my high school experience in Miami loosing friends, and being kicked out of the house as a teen by my own mom for being a lesbian, is not a formula you can conjure up. It’s real it happens and it is still happening. I read some of the author’s interviews and it’s semi-autobiorgraphical. You, not being a Latina, may not have experienced something like this as a young adult therefore can give a book like this a bad review, but others who need it, can have an empowering story to give them hope and make them laugh. This is a book I wish I could have read when I was a teen! I strongly recommend others to read for themselves and form their own oppinion.
Hi, Soraya,
Thanks for reading YA or STFU and submitting a comment. You’re right: as someone who doesn’t identify as Latina, I definitely can’t speak from a point of experience with regards to this novel. And this might well be one of the reasons I had a hard time really getting into the book. In the case of Down to the Bone, I’m more of an “outsider” reader of the novel than an “insider.”
That said, I’m not sure I can value a book just because it addresses an important circumstance from a distinct and often unheard perspective. While I appreciate Dole’s story in terms of the way it represents an all-too-often unheard minority, I feel like the book itself suffers for its ambition. I would have preferred it if one conflict could have taken center stage, rather than the myriad of challenges appearing one after the next. While I recognize that in “real life” challenges come one after the other and don’t resolve nearly so neatly, I felt like Dole was using these challenges as the sole source of Laura’s characterization and that we never got to get to know the narrator on her own terms which, ironically, were the terms she was seeking to define throughout the novel.
I don’t think that this book suffered for it ambitiousness. It was a great and clever plot line. I that Mayra Dole did a great job with this book and comend Harper Collins for take a huge risk with this book.
I also feel that this was a topic that needs to be talked about in fiction books before stories like this will come out in the nonfiction section.