Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: A lyrical novel about family and friendship from critically acclaimed author Benjamin Alire Sáenz.

Aristotle is an angry teen with a brother in prison. Dante is a know-it-all who has an unusual way of looking at the world. When the two meet at the swimming pool, they seem to have nothing in common.

But as the loners start spending time together, they discover that they share a special friendship—the kind that changes lives and lasts a lifetime. And it show more is through this friendship that Ari and Dante will learn the most important truths about themselves and the kind of people they want to be.

I RECEIVED THIS BOOK AS A GIFT. THANKS!

My Review: First love, with another boy, when you're fifteen and angsty and from a Mexican-American family.

Wow, that's a lot. Like, a real, real lot.

Which, as adults, we sometimes do not take into account when dealing with teens. The thing we lose sight of most often is that teens have adult-strength emotions triggered by the same things we get triggered by but without our decades of perspective to temper our responses with. Ari's right...his Dad is suffering. His Dad is right...Ari can't understand this suffering. In fact, no one really can. Adults don't think this is as weird and awful as Ari, not yet used to the helplessness of loving others, does. All Ari knows is that his Dad's refusal to talk about his feelings feels like rejection. So Ari clams up...and doesn't see the irony of this. Perspective: missing.

Dante, being brash and bold, just...does stuff. Ari feels envious, astonished, drawn to this bigness and forcefulness. This feels so intoxicating, so overwhelmingly right, that he and Dante meet each other all the time, talk, think, and in that gloriously uniquely young man way, fall in love. They're on different pages here, too, stunningly. Dante doesn't see this love as weird or ugly...it's the 1980s! Stonewall was in the 1960s! Ari thinks it's another way he's weird. He does think Dante's weird, too, and if Dante...big, bright, beautiful Dante with his strong ideas about Chicanismo...is weird, weird must be okay. Somehow that must be true, but how?

Thus is first love born. That was my absolute favorite thing about the story. It wasn't about the zeal of the organs for each other, in Joseph Campbell's memorable and accurate formulation of sexual desire's essence; it was instead about the addictive rush of communion with the Other, the joy of discovering the Other is not only Other but gloriously beautifully Other. These boys discover, slowly and organically, that Love is the best, the only addictive drug that makes things better.

Or it can. And it does in this story. It does this, you should note, S L O W L Y. And Ari, angry teen with a huge rock on top of his mouth, needs help figuring out what it is about Dante that he is, well, Noticing. Here is where I felt the true beauty of the story comes to the fore. It is Ari's parents, these complicatedly wounded souls who are sources of difficulty for him (as all parents must be) who rip off the bandage and show him that he is in love with Dante.

And they do it, in 1980s El Paso, Texas, with kindness and acceptance. This is how we know it's fiction.

Everything about this read was a pleasure to me. It's been over a decade since the story burst on the scene. There are sequels (I haven't read those yet). This story keeps reverberating through our louding voices of hatred. I hope you and I, readers with mileage and perspective unavailable to its target audience, can help that audience find this wonderful story of honest love and acceptance offered and accepted. show less

You guys! I am speechless. I have no idea why every single review that I came across for Ari and Dante 2 on the gram was disappointing because I, on the contrary, was deeply invested and enamoured by it.

Ari and Dante dive into the waters of the world is the aftermath of them discovering the secrets of the universe. (As if it was not obvious already)

‘In Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, two boys in a border town fell in love. Now, they must discover what it means show more to stay in love and build a relationship in a world that seems to challenge their very existence.’

Benjamin Alire Sáenz lived up to his reputation of weaving stories that not only touch and warm your heart but also are incredibly insightful.

‘The world would be a better place if everyone did more thinking and less talking. There might be a lot less hatred.’

Through the lives of Aristotle and Dante, the author speaks out about homophobia, racism, grief, mental health, and what it feels like to be surrounded by people that love you, yet craving for it. The delicate balance he creates between the struggles of balancing a relationship in a world riddled with homophobia along with everything else is unmatchable.

‘You're every street I've ever walked. You're the tree outside my window, you're a sparrow as he flies. You're the book that I am reading. You're every poem I've ever loved.’

Read this book because it might help you cope with loss.

Read this book because it might teach you how to Love.

Read this book because it might show you how to be loved.

Read this book because it will surely leave a lasting impression on you. show less

The seven stories in this simply but beautifully written, haunted and haunting collection are told from the point of view of male protagonists. Many are teenagers with artistic interests, or adult visual artists or writers, and it is difficult not to see these men as stand-ins for the author, Benjamin Alire Sáenz, an award-winning poet, novelist and writer of books for children and young adults, who came out as gay at the age of 54.
The stories in Everything Begins and Ends at the Kentucky show more Club are set in the border cities of El Paso, Texas and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, the second largest bi-national metropolitan area on the U. S. – Mexico border. Located two blocks south of the Rio Grande on Avenida Juarez, The Kentucky Club is a-not-much-to-look-at bar that all the characters have a connection to, visit, or dream about. As Michael says in “The Hurting Game,” “The Kentucky Club was code for home." Benjamin Alire Sáenz became the first Latino writer to win the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for 'Kentucky Club:' who’s ever looked around a run-down bar and wondered who the various first timers and regulars were and what their lives were like, Sáenz has supplied a moving collection of answers. show less

I was warned that this book would make me ugly cry, but I thought "Sure, a young adult book is going to tear me open and jump on my heart. Sure."

Dammit, I ugly cried.

This is a strange little love story about two teenage boys who seem to be so different that you have to wonder how they are even friends. And yet it's clear that from the beginning there's something between them, some understanding that goes far beyond ordinary friendship. Ari and Dante complete each other. The love they have show more for each other brings their families together, and helps Ari's family to heal from the blows life has dealt them.

Their love is magical.

I listened to the audiobook which was narrated by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and he made the characters glow with life. They were so real that as angry as I was with Ari much of the time, my heart broke for him too. As frustrated as I was with his parents, I understood their inability to confront their past. And as odd as I initially found Dante's parents, I came to love them. These characters are fully developed, and in spite of their flaws, they are loveable.

I'm not a huge fan of YA literature, but this book made me wonder if I haven't been too stand-offish about it. If this is the stuff kids read these days, then I'm in. And I'm thrilled to know that the author is writing a sequel. show less