Review: Young or old, a remarkable, touching story...
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 08 5, 2011
Chris O'Guinn's "Exiled to Iowa. Send Help. And Couture." is remarkable for the richness of its story, the sharp, laugh-out-loud humor of its writing, and the big-hearted emotions (painful and joyous) of its characters. Young Adult novels can be as appealing to adults as for the teenage audience they presumably target--after all, we were all teenagers ourselves. What is tricky about this genre--one that is a personal favorite of mine--is capturing the perspective and the language of the young protagonists without losing the kind of literary craft that makes a book work as serious writing.O'Guinn pulls it off extremely well in this, the story of Collin Murray, a gay fifteen-year-old who is dragged away from his urbane Los Angeles adolescence and plopped down in small-town Iowa--the nightmarish heart of Sarah Palin's "real America." Fearing the worst, Collin instead discovers friendship, acceptance, love--and couture--in his new hometown. He also discovers what it means to be loyal, to be courageous, and to be blessed by your family. Collin is smart, but he is not perfect. Like all teens, he is self-absorbed enough that he misses things, and makes mistakes, misjudges and mistrusts. All of the significant characters around Collin become important drivers in the narrative.  In fact, the one problem with this book is that it is a little too rich; such a plethora of potential plot material that one wishes that Chris O'Guinn had opted to make it a two-part series.Actually, there's enough material here to create a second volume. Moreover, at the end of this book, I wanted more: more of the characters, more of the story, more of O'Guinn's wonderful writing. After all, Collin's only sixteen, and there's plenty of trauma ahead of him in high school. As a former teenager, and the current parent of two high-schoolers, I hope we'll see a sequel.