These Things Happen
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4.9 • 8 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A domestic story told in numerous original and endearing voices. The story opens with Wesley, a tenth grader, and involves his two sets of parents (the mom and her second husband, a very thoughtful doctor; and the father who has become a major gay lawyer/activist and his fabulous "significant other" who owns a restaurant).
Wesley is a fabulous kid, whose equally fabulous best friend Theo has just won a big school election and simultaneously surprises everyone in his life by announcing that he is gay. No one is more surprised than Wesley, who actually lives temporarily with his gay father and partner, so that he can get to know his rather elusive dad. When a dramatic and unexpected trauma befalls the boys in school, all the parents converge noisily in love and well-meaning support. But through it all, each character ultimately is made to face certain challenges and assumptions within his/her own life, and the playing out of their respective life priorities and decisions is what makes this novel so endearing and so special.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wesley Bowman, the teen protagonist of this debut novel from the writer, producer, and director of such TV dramas as My So-Called Life and Thirtysomething, leads a privileged but fractured life in Manhattan. His parents have divorced, and Wesley's recently moved in with his father an influential gay rights activist and his father's partner, George, in order to "get to know each other as men, since the belief is I might soon become one." While Wesley struggles to acclimate to his new digs, his best friend, Theo, wins the class presidency and announces he's gay during his acceptance speech. His classmates are indifferent, but Theo, eager to acquire "edge," hopes for a trial by fire for coming out. When the flames do crop up, they're much hotter than Theo could've imagined, and they land him in the hospital. Despite a tendency to couch exposition in dialogue, Kramer succeeds in depicting an emotionally resonant and unexpected connection between Wesley and George. The humanity and love between two people thrown together by circumstance is Kramer's triumph, and it nearly redeems the novel.
