Adam
Schrag switches gears from her autobiographical graphic-novel series, High School Chronicles of Ariel Schrag, and turns to fiction, undertaking a major challenge. She attempts to convey the thoughts, voice, actions, and mind-set of a straight, wealthy 17-year-old California boy determined to meet the love of his life. She succeeds in being on target in tone, but the plot strains credulity. Adam hasn’t even made out with a girl yet, so how does spending the summer with his older lesbian sister in New York City help with his quest? Casey, very much on the gay scene socially and politically, does take him places, and he even meets the redhead of his dreams. But Gillian, an attractive lesbian in her early twenties, beds Adam because she believes his deceitful claim that he is a female-to-male transsexual. To live this lie, he devises various deceptions involving bungee cords (don’t ask). He can’t share his outrageous secret with Casey, or her sometime lover, Butch Casey (again, don’t ask), or apartment mate June, who lusts after Casey. Finally it is Ethan, who also shares the apartment, who becomes Adam’s mentor in Schrag’s unusual, very explicit coming-of-age novel. --Whitney Scott