- 19 Love Songs, by David Levithan. Text Publishing. $19.99.
American young adult author David Levithan's new book came out of his tradition of writing a new story for his friends every Valentine's Day. Some of this collection brings together those stories, others have been published in various publications.
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Despite the title these are not, in fact, songs. The name comes from the way the book is organised around the conceit of each story being one of 19 "tracks", like a mixtape (for those who are old enough to remember what they were).
And like a mixtape, some "tracks" will probably be more evocative or relatable to each reader than others. There are stories, poems, vignettes and even a comic strip - some fictional, some non-fictional, though it's not always obvious which is which. Most of them, like Levithan's other books, deal with gay, lesbian and transgender characters. But gay, straight or whatever, the theme throughout is love in all its various forms.
The book opens with the distinctively titled Quiz Bowl Antichrist, in which Alec is the only member of his high school's competitive quiz team with a literary rather than scientific leaning, making him useful for certain questions. He also has an "unarticulated crush" on one of his teammates, Damien. It's a sardonically funny story that could have been expanded into a novel (and might be: Levithan took the musical theatre excerpts included in Will Grayson, Will Grayson, which he wrote with John Green, and expanded them into a full libretto).
The Quarterback and the Cheerleader tells the story of Infinite Darlene, nearly, a transgender high school football quarterback who is going on a rare, for her, date. It's her first time out with Cory, the head cheerleader of a rival team and the reader is privy to their thoughts and feelings and how events play out. It's sweet and soulful.
And in The Woods, a man makes a startling discovery - his partner writes Taylor Swift fan fiction - with unexpected consequences.
Some of the pieces are slight and some work best if you're familiar with Levithan's other work: 2934 (An Every Day story) makes more sense if you know the narrator comes from Every Day, a novel in which he woke up occupying a new body every day.
Others feature characters from his earlier books such as Boy Meets Boy (where Infinite Darlene was introduced) but work as self-contained stories.
Levithan delights in wordplay and the joy of language, reading and books - one piece was written for the Freedom to Read Foundation. But he but also captures feelings superbly: the pain of unrequited love, the deep and abiding connections formed in longterm relationships, the awkward pangs of crushes and first loves.
Overall, this is a joyous, varied collection that will particularly appeal to the author's fans but has something for others, too.