Perry Moore, Hero
I just finished my copy of Perry Moore's Hero, an upcoming YA novel about a gay teenage superhero. See, with that description, I was pretty sure I was going to love it. Gay teenage superhero! Origin story/coming out story/coming of age story! Gay! But it turned out to be sadly disappointing.
For one thing, there is a startling amount of casual misogyny in the book, which got my back up right away. There are several lines like "You know how women can be with their pictures. Most of them don't like to be reminded of how they looked thirty pounds ago" (p. 57) and "Do you remember the Velvet Vixen? [...] Well, she was a real slut, and I didn't want anyone thinking I was easy like her" [this from the main character's mother, discussing why she initially kept her relationship with his father a secret] (p. 301). I'm tempted to say that women are generally problematic in the book -- they're mostly mean, dumb, or absent -- except that the men don't fare any better. None of the characters are especially likeable, although several of them have Tragic Backstories, possibly intended to make them more sympathetic (it doesn't work). I found I didn't care very much about what happened to any of them.
Other problems include: unrealistic dialogue, with a special mention for all the terrible expository conversations that happen toward the end; confusing timelines; unclear motivations for characters' actions; important background information withheld for way too long, for no reason that I could tell; shoddy worldbuilding that relies too heavily on existing comic-book characters, especially Superman. (When your leading superhero dude is a handsome alien with a whole raft of amazing powers who crashlanded on a farm in Kansas after his home planet blew up, and the dude who was the previous superhero head honcho disguised himself by putting on glasses and had a secret identity as a newspaper journalist--and photographer, hello Spider-Man--you may have crossed the line from homage into theft. Just because your Kryptonite is purple doesn't make it any less Kryptonite.) I also found it hard to get a grip on the setting; I spent at least the first half of the book convinced that it was taking place near a mid-size Southern city, or possibly even a nameless, fictional city, only to realize, when someone namechecks Poughkeepsie about 100 pages from the end, that it's set in & around New York City. A lot of these problems wouldn't have been too difficult to fix; a good editor with a firm hand could have done a lot to improve the book.
Finally, though, I was disappointed with how the book handles the premise of the gay teenage superhero. People keep treating him terribly because he's gay -- kicking him off the basketball team *and* his superhero tryout team, spraypainting FAGGOT on his house, snickering and staring, his father pushing him away in public, his father getting demoted at work after he comes out, etc. etc. -- he just never gets a break. It's depressing. And this is supposed to be present-day New York & environs? It seems unrealistic that he'd have so little support. Even the few characters who don't hate him or laugh at him for being gay never come out and explicitly say, "It's okay with me that you're gay." Their acceptance is couched in coyness and code-talk about how everyone has their own secrets and choices to make. I found it very frustrating.
You guys, I wanted to like this book so much! It was sad. Now somebody needs to write a really awesome gay teenage superhero YA book, so I can rave about it as is only right and proper. Please?
For one thing, there is a startling amount of casual misogyny in the book, which got my back up right away. There are several lines like "You know how women can be with their pictures. Most of them don't like to be reminded of how they looked thirty pounds ago" (p. 57) and "Do you remember the Velvet Vixen? [...] Well, she was a real slut, and I didn't want anyone thinking I was easy like her" [this from the main character's mother, discussing why she initially kept her relationship with his father a secret] (p. 301). I'm tempted to say that women are generally problematic in the book -- they're mostly mean, dumb, or absent -- except that the men don't fare any better. None of the characters are especially likeable, although several of them have Tragic Backstories, possibly intended to make them more sympathetic (it doesn't work). I found I didn't care very much about what happened to any of them.
Other problems include: unrealistic dialogue, with a special mention for all the terrible expository conversations that happen toward the end; confusing timelines; unclear motivations for characters' actions; important background information withheld for way too long, for no reason that I could tell; shoddy worldbuilding that relies too heavily on existing comic-book characters, especially Superman. (When your leading superhero dude is a handsome alien with a whole raft of amazing powers who crashlanded on a farm in Kansas after his home planet blew up, and the dude who was the previous superhero head honcho disguised himself by putting on glasses and had a secret identity as a newspaper journalist--and photographer, hello Spider-Man--you may have crossed the line from homage into theft. Just because your Kryptonite is purple doesn't make it any less Kryptonite.) I also found it hard to get a grip on the setting; I spent at least the first half of the book convinced that it was taking place near a mid-size Southern city, or possibly even a nameless, fictional city, only to realize, when someone namechecks Poughkeepsie about 100 pages from the end, that it's set in & around New York City. A lot of these problems wouldn't have been too difficult to fix; a good editor with a firm hand could have done a lot to improve the book.
Finally, though, I was disappointed with how the book handles the premise of the gay teenage superhero. People keep treating him terribly because he's gay -- kicking him off the basketball team *and* his superhero tryout team, spraypainting FAGGOT on his house, snickering and staring, his father pushing him away in public, his father getting demoted at work after he comes out, etc. etc. -- he just never gets a break. It's depressing. And this is supposed to be present-day New York & environs? It seems unrealistic that he'd have so little support. Even the few characters who don't hate him or laugh at him for being gay never come out and explicitly say, "It's okay with me that you're gay." Their acceptance is couched in coyness and code-talk about how everyone has their own secrets and choices to make. I found it very frustrating.
You guys, I wanted to like this book so much! It was sad. Now somebody needs to write a really awesome gay teenage superhero YA book, so I can rave about it as is only right and proper. Please?