Little faggot A novel

By turns heartbreaking, hilarious, and hope-filled, the latest from Tea (Valencia) follows a 13-year-old runaway's search for a queer paradise. In his hometown of Phoenix, Ariz., Spencer dreams of a "mythically accepting place like Provincetown, Massachusetts," believing that there, he would be accepted as gay. After he's beaten so badly by a classmate that he's sent to the hospital, he decides to make his dream a reality. Armed with cash from his only friend, Joy, along with a tall tale about an uncle in Provincetown, Spencer hitches a ride with two "hippie boys" he met at a party. The pair then steal his money and ditch him outside Austin, Tex. He walks into town, where a man tries to hustle him at the bus station and he's saved by Velvet, an older handsome queer boy, and they travel together to New Orleans. The promise of Provincetown still looms in Spencer's mind, but Velvet's company in New Orleans helps him to discover he's not alone. Each episode in the colorful and gritty narrative captures the reader's attention, but the main attraction is Spencer's barbed voice: "I was born to solid, stable, functional, miserable straight people." This coming-of-age story soars. (Oct.)

A gay 13-year-old embarks on a multistate misadventure after running away from home. Spencer could have it a lot worse, but he also could have it a lot better. He's white and upper-middle-class, growing up in Phoenix. But he's also transparently queer at a suburban junior high in 2010, which means he's a major target for bullies. After a schoolyard gay-bashing sends Spencer to the hospital and his mother assumes he was an antagonist rather than a victim in the fight, he decides he must escape the Southwest. With the help of his sole friend, a purple-haired teen witch named Joy, Spencer plots a course for Provincetown, Massachusetts, the location of a long-held fantasy in which he's being raised by a sophisticated gay uncle. Spencer's hitchhiking almost immediately goes awry, and a Dickensian odyssey ensues that winds through Texas and Louisiana and brings Spencer into the orbit of Velvet, a handsome, rough-and-tumble teenager headed to New Orleans to see his estranged sister. Spencer's narrative voice is a delight, striking a skillful balance between anxiety, longing, awe, and wit as he gradually acquires survival skills and discovers the world beyond his conventional upbringing. (Upon first encountering drag queens: "Blush cut up the sides of their faces like spray paint; their faces looked like murals of faces. Their mouths were luscious and muscular, working around the songs like they were eating them, and their hair looked like bird's nests or war helmets, like Marie Antoinette or Dolly Parton.") There's a tidiness in the novel's denouement that might strain some readers' credulity, but for others, Tea's sincerity and generosity toward her characters will be a balm. It's a pleasure to see the world through Spencer's eyes. A comical, tender, queer coming-of-age, where the journey is the destination. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.