Review: Adam by Ariel Schrag

Title: Adam
Author: Ariel Schrag
Publisher: Mariner Books
Release date: June 10th 2014
Pages: 302
Genre: Young Adult contemporary
Source: Purchased
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When Adam Freedman -- a skinny, awkward, inexperienced teenager from Piedmont, California -- goes to stay with his older sister Casey in New York City, he is hopeful that his life is about to change. And it sure does.

It is the Summer of 2006. Gay marriage and transgender rights are in the air, and Casey has thrust herself into a wild lesbian subculture. Soon Adam is tagging along to underground clubs, where there are hot older women everywhere he turns. It takes some time for him to realize that many in this new crowd assume he is trans -- a boy who was born a girl. Why else would this baby-faced guy always be around?

Then Adam meets Gillian, the girl of his dreams -- but she couldn't possibly be interested in him. Unless passing as a trans guy might actually work in his favor...

This book was WILD. Wow. 

I know a lot of people took issue with this premise (especially once the movie version came out), but I think the story of a cis boy pretending to be trans is a fascinating perspective from which to explore trans issues--as long as you make clear that of course, pretending to be trans is absolutely not okay. So I was really excited to read this book to see how and if it would do that. And even though this was a super fun book to read, I'm still on the fence on whether it does this clearly enough.

Adam, in the beginning of the novel, is truly terrible. He is frustrated at his lack of sexual experience and blames women for this. Asides from the whole pretending-to-be-trans thing, he and his disgustingly homophobic and pervy friend spy on his sister (!!!???) while she is having sex with her girlfriend. He is super ignorant when it comes to queer and trans issues, and makes a number of transphobic comments.

But, I actually liked the fact that he was terrible in the beginning of the novel. While we are starting to get more and more novels about queer characters struggling with other people's homophobia/transphobia, we don't have a lot of books about homophobic/transphobic characters addressing their own prejudices and educating themselves about queer issues, and that can be a really powerful thing to read about. Reading about Adam learning so much about trans issues--even though it's for the completely wrong reasons--I think could be really useful for someone who isn't very well versed in queer and trans issues.

I also really loved the depiction of queer spaces. Adam and his group of actually queer friends go to queer sex clubs, a gay marriage rally, and a number of queer parties and gatherings, and the depiction of this subculture was much more explicit than what we are used to in YA, which I think can also be really powerful.

Finally, I thought the parodic depiction of white queer communities were really entertaining and powerful. Adam joins a community of almost exclusively white queer people who are hyper-politically correct and constantly trying to be more radical and to think of the least privileged queer people, all while ignoring the lived experiences of queer people of color. Adam--despite all of his shortcomings--comments on these discrepancies that make for a productive engagement with whiteness in queer activism. I was really disappointed that the movie completely erases this element of the novel, since this to me was one of the most powerful elements.

I was really torn on what to make of this novel's depiction of sex. This novel includes some of the most graphic sex scenes I have ever read in a YA novel, and it discusses in detail how Adam straps down his actual penis in order to strap on a dildo in order to have sex with Gillian. On the one hand, pushing the boundaries on what level of sexual explicit material is acceptable in YA is really powerful, especially because of this discussion of non-normative sex acts such as the use of sex toys and the discussions around queer trans people's sexual pleasure that go along with it. On the other hand, the novel never really addresses the fact that all of the sexual interactions between Adam and Gillian, during which Gillian thinks she is having sex with a trans boy, are a clear violation of consent. There is one scene at the end that is especially icky in terms of consent. This novel really pushes the boundaries on what is acceptable in YA--in ways both good and bad.

***THIS PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS***
Even though I thought I liked where the novel was going, I was really frustrated by the ending. I cannot believe that Gillan stays with Adam after finding out that he is not trans. I felt like the novel would have needed to punish Adam (as bad as that sounds) in some way for pretending to be trans and for violating consent with Gillian in order to really demonstrate to readers that these choices are reprehensible. By having Gillian forgive Adam, the novel, if not condoning his actions, makes the case that they are forgivable and understandable, which really detracted from the novel's message. And then, the very ending, in which, after Adam and Gillian break up, Gillian starts dating another cis boy... As a declaration of the legitimacy of bisexuality (the way it's framed in the movie), this could have been an important point to make, but because this is never discussed, it veered into iffy turning-the-lesbian-straight territory.

Adam is one of the most shocking YA novels I've ever read, in ways good and bad. While I didn't love everything about it, and I really wish the ending had taken Adam to task for his actions more explicitly, this novel opens up a lot of important conversations and pushes queer YA in new directions. Plus, its shock factor makes it a super fun read.