OLD ENOUGH

Savannah Henry faces a traumatic experience from her high school years at the same time that her life expands at college.

Away from home and everyone she knows for the first time, Savannah finds her understanding of sex, consent, gender, and sexuality evolving through both an academic lens—in her Gender and Sexuality Studies 101 seminar—as well as through her own lived experiences. Befriending a group of queer people around whom she can be her authentic self and pursuing romantic relationships with polyamorous, lesbian, and gender-nonconforming folks, Savannah begins to recognize the unresolved trauma of her teenage years, including the fact that an unwanted sexual encounter was actually rape: “This haunts me every waking day of my fucking life.” Her relationship with her childhood best friend, Izzie (whose brother was Savannah’s rapist), begins to disintegrate as Savannah identifies the lasting harm of the rape and the social castigation she suffered in its aftermath. Izzie’s looming wedding forces Sav to confront her trauma and the vastly disparate lives she and Izzie lead with fresh eyes: “We were different now, more different than I had ever thought.” Jakobson brilliantly blends complex ideas and relationship dynamics with Savannah’s witty stream of consciousness and sharp dialogue. The author's fearless approach to depicting sex refuses euphemism, reveling in the awkward with unflinching accuracy. Indeed, the language of the book is strikingly intentional, and Jakobson demonstrates how easy it is to respect pronouns, the damage misgendering can do, and the myriad nuances of gender and sexuality—which are removed from their binary definitions and set free. Sav’s therapist tells her “We are never beholden to the person we were yesterday,” and the reader breathes a sigh of relief when Savannah finally believes and forgives her younger self.

This poignant rendering of one young woman’s journey out of denial and shame into a budding self-love is essential reading.