BOY LIKE ME

A gay teenage boy in England finds love and purpose.

It’s 1994 in small-town Lincolnshire, and 16-year-old Jamie Hampton daydreams about close, intimate male friendship. He doesn’t really think of himself as gay until a perceptive school librarian gives him a book—Wildflowers of Great Britain—that cleverly conceals a gay love story inside its innocuous cover. Such books are illegal thanks to Section 28; this legislation prevents state schools from teaching “the acceptability of homosexuality” or “promoting homosexuality.” When he starts reading, Jamie finds notes from an anonymous reader in the margins of the book (“I feel like this too. …Anyone else?”), which sparks a correspondence and then a romance. What could be a standard coming-out-under-fire story is distinguished by some unique narrative choices, such as stage directions and parenthetical asides to an off-page editor. Regular footnotes add additional information and levity: “* ‘The teenage characters in this YA novel behave like teenagers! I, an adult, would never behave like this! One star.’ (Inevitable Amazon review).” As is often the case with teenagers, however, the characters do sometimes evince great maturity. Blurring the line between fiction and memoir, this novel, which is anchored by ’90s cultural references, is a throwback to a time that feels familiar today, despite the characters’ hopes that things will get better. Cast members are cued white.

A story connecting the queer past to the present with optimism and humor.