Geography Club

Title: Geography Club
Author: Brent Hartinger
Publisher: HarperTempest, imprint of HarperCollins (2003)
Genre: young adult, contemporary fiction, queer fiction
Pages: 226

Description

"I knew that any wrong action, however slight, could reveal my true identity..."

Russel is still going on dates with girls. Kevin would do anything to prevent his teammates on the baseball team from finding out. Min and Terese tell everyone they're just really good friends. But after a while, the truth's too hard to hide--at least from each other--so they form the "Geography Club." Nobody else will come. Why would they want to? Their secret should be safe. (jacket copy)

Reaction

I’ve been waiting for years to read this book. I first heard about it in an interview or something in Writer’s Digest, oh, about 4 years ago, and then instantly forgot about it. I rediscovered it about a year ago at Powell’s. Their downtown store has this lovely feature in the Young Adult section: all queer books are labeled with stick-out rainbow tags (originally in honor of Pride month). When I first discovered this fact, I literally ran around grabbing all the marked books, and then had to force myself to put 80% of them back.

I love queer fiction, but I have trouble finding books that I consider really good. Many address the issues, but don’t have the writing skill to back them up. However, most of the queer YA books I’ve read have overcome this, and Geography Club, by Brent Hartiger, is among them.

Being a teenager is never easy. For the characters in Geography Club, however, life is made even harder by this simple truth: they’re club really has nothing to do with geography, it’s just their front for a gay teen support group. It happens almost by accident, but the club quickly becomes a source of strength for all the members.

What the club members eventually realize is that it doesn’t really matter if you’re gay, bi, straight, or anything in between. What matters more is feeling like you belong, and having people you can trust and talk to. This is the real strength of the book, and it will appeal to anyone who’s ever felt out of place. And, let’s face it, what teenager doesn’t at some point feel out of place?

The only downside I found to the book was that it felt too rushed, especially at the beginning. It's relatively short for a YA novel (at only 226 pages), and could have easily used another fifty to a hundred pages to dwell on the character development a bit more. But, it's a nice quick read, and the characters are all realistic and avoid obvious stereo-types.

Design
I like the cover well enough, and it does draw the eye. However, I didn't really fall in love with it. I think it makes it look a little bit older than it is, but maybe it will get an updated cover one of these days, now that YA is kicking way more butt than it was back in 2003.

Final Rating

4/5, definitely one of the better queer books I've read.