Review: Out by Laura Preble

[sparkindarkness]

I was extremely wary about picking up this book. I have yet to read a discrimiflip novel that worked and didn’t end up being really appropriative and offensive. I find it doubtful they can work due to the inherent nature of making minorities the evil perpetrators of the very crimes committed against them. Still, I’m told it is possible, people

Comments

[tattooofhername]

Angry, seething, vaguely amused... just wish I was in any way shocked.

I'll happily put my savings on the author being straight, but with gay friends who totes approved or... something.

[sparkindarkness]

Pretty much sums up my emotions - well not the vaguely amused since I had to read the damn thing (an experience I wouldn't wish on anyway).

Yes she is and she uses gay family as her human shields.

[tattooofhername]

...

Hold my earrings, I'm going in.

Thing is, I've seen this flip done well before, with race. It CAN be done, and it can make for a very compelling story that makes people actually THINK. Instead, we get this.

[sparkindarkness]

I'm still on the fence because I haven't seen it work though a lot of people advise Noughts and Crosses to me.

Want me to hold your coat?

[sparkindarkness]

In this case because I had enough people buzzing around fawning over the idea that a) I had to check if it was even remotely possible to do this right (which I doubt) and b) I wanted to at least try to speak out and counter the positive buzz if/when it turned out to be as bad as it was especially as it's being pushed as an amazingly wonderful GBLT YA book - that gives me chills.

I've abandoned a lot of books and even genres and sub-genres because of the grey hairs they cause but this, with it's marketing as being so pro-gblt and so damn SUPPORTIVE and EMPATHIC, could not let it go past. Discrimiflips are also a severe pet hate of mine. And 'tis part of what we do at Fangs.

[sparkindarkness]

This is what rum is for. And not staying up all night with fury festering

[paulnolan]

I wish I could be shocked at this... fucking straight people, I swear.

[sparkindarkness]

Pretty much says it all

[gwyd]

May I ask how you feel about Forever War?

[sparkindarkness]

I haven't read it to know exactly how it is handled. The fact it was written in 1974 makes me wary, but it also sounds like homosexuality isn't the primary focus or a clumsily handled primary message. I can't say it looks ideal by any stretch - with gay normativity being a dystopian thing apparently

[hsb]

IIRC, it's how society back on Earth copes with the need to end population growth. The bold heroes are in an almost aggressively het bubble; initially they bunk up in het couples that change every week or so, to build binds across the whole team or something. They choose to start relationships instead. I assume that's a reaction against some of the 60s hippy stuff about future relationships.

I wouldn't read it if I were you because the gay society is not portrayed as especially healthy, it needs the het warriors to hold up a mirror to it or something (actually, don't read it because I found it unrealistic *while* I was reading it, and my teenaged self just didn't do that, I just chomped up everything back then, and suspended disbelief and critical faculties while reading)

H

[gwyd]

It's about the experience of coming home from deployment in the Vietnam war and having the world get different increasingly faster so that your farther and farther out of sync with society put into a future science fiction universe.

I think the previous end of deployment was significantly more dystopian what with the health care situation. I'm not defending the depiction of homosexuality, but I was interested in Sparkindarkness' take as it handles the flip differently than the homophobic screed reviewed above, the context being really different.

(Editted because I realize I was unclear as to what I was referring too.

[kennsea]

I'm puking blood here.

[sparkindarkness]

That was my reaction. blood and vital organs