Idlewild
A Novel
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- £4.49
Publisher Description
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY: Vox * The Paris Review * NPR * Vanity Fair / A FINALIST FOR THE L.A. TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR FIRST FICTION
James Frankie Thomas’s Idlewild is a darkly funny story of two adults looking back on their intense teenage friendship, in a queer, trans, and early-Internet twist on the Manhattan prep school novel.
Idlewild is a tiny, artsy Quaker high school in lower Manhattan. Students call their teachers by their first names, there are no grades, and every day begins with 20 minutes of contemplative silence in the Meetinghouse. It is during one of those meetings that an airplane hits the Twin Towers.
For two Idlewild outcasts, 9/11 serves as the first day of an intense, 18-month friendship. Fay is prickly, aloof, and obsessed with gay men; Nell is shy, sensitive, and obsessed with Fay. The two of them bond fiercely and spend all their waking hours giddily parsing their environment for homoerotic subtext.
Then, during rehearsals for the fall play, they notice two sexually ambiguous boys who are potential candidates for their exclusive Invert Society. The pairs become mirrors of one another and drive each other to make choices that they’ll regret for the rest of their lives.
Looking back on these events as adults, the estranged Fay and Nell trace that fateful school year, recalling backstage theater department intrigue, antiwar demonstrations, smutty fanfic written over AIM and a shared dial-up connection—and the spectacular cascade of mistakes, miscommunications, and betrayals that would ultimately tear the two of them apart.
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In Thomas's intoxicating debut, two estranged friends look back on their high school years at a Manhattan Quaker school in the early 2000s. As a junior at Idlewild, Nell Rifkin develops an intense, nonsexual friendship with her crush Fay Vasquez-Rabinowitz. The girls become the "F&N unit" aka "The Invert Society" and write stories about classmates Theo and Christopher, whom they imagine to be gay, and discuss queer readings of Othello and The Scarlet Letter. Nell and Fay appear in a school production of Othello set in the antebellum South, which elicits accusations of racism against their beloved drama teacher, Wanda, who is subsequently fired. Many of the students rally in support of Wanda, including Fay, and Nell's ambivalence about Wanda drives a wedge between the two friends. More cracks in the F&N unit are caused by the stress and uncertainty of college applications, and Fay's exploration of her sexuality and gender, as she crushes on Theo and wishes she were a gay boy. Thomas astutely captures his characters' anxieties as the drama unfolds, and his choice to give them the benefit of hindsight allows for a nuanced and sensitive portrayal of Fay's identity formation. It's easy to grow obsessed with this auspicious novel.
