Laura Preble

I was extremely wary about picking up this book. I have yet to read a discrimiflip novel that worked and didn’t end up being really appropriative and offensive. I find it doubtful they can work due to the inherent nature of making minorities the evil perpetrators of the very crimes committed against them. Still, I’m told it is possible, people assured me it was possible, so I picked up this book when it was released to see if it actually managed it.

So we have the story of Chris. A show more straight boy living in a world where, it seems, just about everyone is gay. Being straight is considered sick and wrong, condemned by both the church and the state (which are closely entwined). He tries to navigate this discrimination, as the son of a minister, and try to find freedom with the woman he loves.

And no, this discrimiflip did not manage it. Not even close. In fact, I’m sorely tempted to put a trigger warning for homophobia simply for having to discuss the contents of this book.

The author has appropriated every aspect of homophobic oppression imaginable. We have child bullying, we have demeaning dehumanisation from the pulpit, we have a horrific description of conversion therapy, we have chemical castration; we even have concentration camps, actual concentration camps.

All of these are extreme examples of oppression that have constantly been used to persecute and destroy gay people and they’re all used in this book – often graphically – but flipped. The victims of this torture and even this genocide are now made the villains. Those who inflicted them are now the victims. It is unbelievably offensive and enraging to see these despicable crimes that were – and continue to be – inflicted on gay people depicted with gay people as the perpetrators and straight people as the innocent victims. Even some of the basic language of anti-gay oppression have been callously appropriated by this straight author: we even have straight people being called “queer”. The book's even called "Out"! There really is no limits to the appropriation in this book and the extent to which gay people are presented as inflicting exactly the same cruel persecutions that, in reality, gay people have endured and died from.

To take the history of gay persecution, to take all of these horrendous things that have been used to victimise gay people and then mangle them to make gay people the villains makes me choke with rage. I have no words to describe how offensive this is. I had to stop reading several times because the book was so painfully offensive to read I couldn't keep going

The actual depiction of someone living with a closeted sexuality is also ridiculously shallow, especially for a young person. Chris finds out he likes a girl (note: A girl. Not girls. Just the one twu luv that follows the endlessly dull love at first sight meme that I’d complain more about if it weren’t such a tiny problem compared to the gross offensiveness of this book), it’s a shocking discovery. Within the hour he seeks out his friend to tell her. No, really.

In this society where being straight is illegal and demonised universally from birth, he couldn’t even keep it a secret for an hour. In fact, he goes home and his sister – in this ultra gay-normative society – already knows he’s straight! She even has some subversive literature for him! Yes, within a day of realising he’s straight, he already has a support net in this overwhelmingly gay world where heterosexuality is constantly demonised from the highest echelons of government. As an extra bonus, he meets Carmen, his love interest and she tells him she is straight in their first ever conversation, in a public café no less. They’re complete strangers, straight people are tortured and killed with the full blessing of the theocratic government but she’s going to spill her secret. I boggle how it can even be called a secret if 5 minutes acquaintance are sufficient for the big reveal.

To go with all these suddenly revealed straight people (including his sister, his sister’s boyfriend, his sister’s friends – seriously there seems to be more named straight people than gay people in this gay majority world!) Chris deals very quickly with any elements of self-loathing, low self-esteem etc he has from spending his entire life being told he’s diseased, wrong, mentally ill, a plague on society, bringing about the end of civilisation, hated by god and going to hell. Within the first three days we seem to be totally past such questioning and the focus quickly changes to the terrible forces that are keeping him and his beloved apart and the utter cruelty of living without her. There is a brief attempt to have him doubt himself in the very beginning but it takes less than a week for it to fade as a distant memory and him to be sure that the persecution of straight people is wrong. He's actually openly challenging and arguing against persecution of straight people on his first day realising he's straight- and it's used as an excuse to clumsily shoe-horn in many of the arguments the gay rights movement uses in the real world (and I have to say how unpleasant it is to see straight people taking our words and arguments for our survival and putting them in the mouth of a straight boy being attack by the evil evil gay folk).

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Anna Incognito is powerful. I don't know how else to explain it. It definitely tugged at my heart a bit, but it also just kept me completely enthralled. It's a raw look inside the mind of one person with mental illness and it can be difficult to read at times, speaking as someone who has been battling with their mental health for years, but it's definitely worth it. No punches are pulled and Anna's journey isn't just a physical one across many miles, it's a mental one and it's an amazing show more thing to witness show less

It seems there's a lot of controversy surrounding this book. The basic premise of the book is that "normal" people are in same-sex relationships and male/female relationships are unusual and against the law. Pretty much the exact opposite of real life. What I keep seeing over and over is that people are upset that the gay community in this book are made out to be the villains. While that's technically true, I think people are really missing the point with this book.

What if being straight was show more considered wrong? What if you could be thrown in jail for loving the wrong person? What would it feel like to be told that being straight was a sickness and you should either be "re-trained" or eradicated so that you don't "infect" others? These are the questions posed in this book. These are all things that people in the GLBT community face in real life. Instead of condemning this book for making gay people out to be the bad guy, people should be praising it for showing the general straight population what it's like to live that way. Only by walking in someone else's shoes can you really understand them and that's what Laura Preble attempts to do with this book.

Although I understand what the author was trying to do and commend her for it, I thought the general plot left a lot to be desired. Things moved slowly in some parts and a little bit too quickly in others, there were some unbelievable coincidences and I wasn't altogether happy with the ending - although maybe we're not supposed to be happy with the ending here.

Overall I enjoyed this very thought provoking read and would encourage others to read it for themselves before judging based on other reviews. show less

Another YA, not quite as good. I liked it ok. Its about two high school girls who are sick of the popular crowd running everything at their school. (And maybe in society in general). They think instead it should be run by people like them, smart creative people. In other words, geeks. They form the "Queen Geek Social Club" to get other girls like them to come out of hiding and join them in this cause. It was a fun read, but not something I'd read again. It had a lot of a funny elements, but show more some of the jokes (particularly involving the main character's robot) were just silly and fell a little flat. show less