REVIEW: Contrived, predictable elments don’t defeat novel’s realism
Oregon high school sophomore Paul Ficklin is gay. He is also a member of the Mormon church.
In his first novel, published in 2009 by Zarahemla Books, a Provo publishing company, Jonathon Langford uniquely captures a struggle more common even here in Utah than many, both inside and outside the Mormon culture, may realize. From the perspective of a reader and a former Mormon, I know it can be rough to deal with anything considered taboo, unacceptable or different for your age and your background.
Clearly, Langford knows that too, or he really did his research. The reactions Paul gets from his clergy, his best friend, his friends’ mother, his own mother and various acquaintances at school show a wide spectrum of emotion and a range of well-developed characters.
Initially, when I was offered this book to review, I meant to steer clear of it and write about something else entirely. I didn’t even want to go there – the subject is touchy and, in reviewing, I felt like I’d have to give a controversial opinion or no opinion at all.
I picked controversial.
After the first few chapters, I felt invested in Paul’s struggle to handle his own desires – both his homosexual and religious ones, and the desires impressed upon him by loved ones as well as by his school’s GSA, which he joined to find acceptance he couldn’t find from peers at church. The pull for me was curiosity – would Paul choose to fight his homosexuality or choose to fight his religious beliefs? I didn’t know at the time that the book was published in Provo by a company titled after a place in the Book of Mormon, so this was a lot more of an unknown at the beginning of my task.
The book uses language specific to the Mormon culture, but isn’t hard to understand if you aren’t part of that culture, since Paul explains within the context of the novel what many of his beliefs mean to friends and family. In this endeavor, he faces rejection, anger, abandonment and prejudice from all sides, even from many of the sources he turns to for help and acceptance.
Some of the character names are outdated and the exchanges between Paul and other teens seem contrived, but I will say that for all the predictability and poorly-masked attempts at “twists” in the plot, Langford succeeds in making it realistic along most of the way, particularly in his ending.
I’d recommend this for those Mormon or otherwise, but would keep it to 14 and up for the language and some PG-13 content important to the authenticity of the story. If you know someone who is Mormon, gay or a teenager in either of those settings, particularly in the local community, this is a good choice for reading to gain some perspective. It is the best attempt I’ve seen, in text or otherwise, at exploring both sides of a complex and often misrespresented situation, whether one shares Langford’s perspective or not.
– pulcre.puella@gmail.com