We Contain Multitudes

It's not every day that you check on what a big literary award winning author is doing next and find out it's a queer YA novel. So when I heard Sarah Henstra was following on the Red Word with a novel heavy on the Whitman about the development of a relationship between two teenage boys in difficult circumstances? This book jumped straight to the top of my TBR pile.

And I'm very glad it did, because though it's somewhat heavier than my favored diet of relatively fluffy queer YA romance stuff, this was a good and powerful one. This is the story of Adam Kurlansky, who usually goes by Kurl, a senior at a high school in Minnesota in 2015, and Jonathan Hopkirk, a sophomore at the same school. They're connected by their English teacher in an show more assignment where they're asked to write letters to each other. They don't have much in common on the face of things, but there they are anyway.

And that's right - this is an epistolary novel, chock full of letters back and forth, and it makes good use of the form. Some bits get left out where they wouldn't be writing, but a surprising amount stays in, since they're writing to process what's going on a lot of the time as well. And their voices change and focus on different parts of scenarios, helping you get into the unreliability of both their POVs. It's a form I like, and this is a very well executed example of it.

Henstra does a good job of capturing these boys' voices, as they move from being more closed off to wondering and open,as their relationship moves from surface-y to friendly to more romantic and navigating that. At first, I thought she was doing a less good job with Kurl, the former football star who's left the team and feels half in school, half working for his uncle's business, than with Jonathan, who's an artsy out gay boy who dresses in vintage clothing and loves Whitman so very much. But then I realized Kurl is more closed off and strangled on the surface at first; Jonathan isn't, but also feels different as he actually gets to know Kurl, even if he seems like he's more open at first. This is a relationship I felt was honest and built well over the course of the book.

We need to note this is a heavier book in a lot of ways. There's bullying and abuse, both of which get pretty serious on page. Each of the boys is missing a parent, as well, which drives a good amount of the plot in different ways for the two of them. This isn't a fluffy book; they go through a lot, and the growth in themselves and their relationship is definitely earned. But just be ready for that stuff.

Also this book really uses the Whitman well. A lot of the time, I find it hard to think the characters would get so into a coincidentally-public-domain work; it feels like the author pushing on it to make the themes they want happen. But here, with these two? They seemed Leaves of Grass really would get to them like this. Not to mention all the leaves of grass on the cover.

So yeah. This was a great book. Not always easy to read, but lovely and real and well-written. Highly recommended, going to go push it on some new people right now. show less

This book.

This is a difficult one to read. It’s full of things that I didn’t want to happen, things that hurt and things that seemed unforgivable.

But this book is about life and life is messy. Loving someone is messy. When you’re young and struggling and hurting ... sometimes your hurt the people who are on your side.

I don’t even know what to write. But this book is beautiful. It’s moving, lovely, terrifying, heart-breaking and .... strangely enough, funny.

Read it.

When Walt Whitman loving, openly gay, Jo, is paired as a pen pal with perpetually bruised football player, Kurl, they seem to approach life from different angles but over time they connect in ways neither would have imagined.

Told in epistolary form, there were occasions where with the dialogue and such, it seemed more like a standard narrative rather than a letter, and there were instances where maybe it was a bit of stretch that certain things would be included in the letters, like when they’d recount moments both had been present for, yet at the same time, as someone who isn’t a particularly verbal person and is much more comfortable putting my thoughts down on paper, I totally understand the appeal for these two characters in show more communicating that way, preferring to work through stuff, analyze and share their feelings through letters even as the time they spend together increases. So for the most part I really liked the format, I liked that it allowed the characters to open up perhaps earlier in the novel than might be believable in a face-to-face scenario, especially for someone as guarded as Kurl. I think the reader and Jo may have spent a lot longer waiting to know Kurl if not for this format that provided him with an outlet to speak before he was ready to actually talk.

You might think with these two boys passing letters back and forth, dealing with difficult issues and falling in love in the process, the focus may be so heavily on them that there isn’t really room for anyone else, but I was mostly pleased with the depth of the secondary characters. While I was left wanting a little more insight into Jo’s sister Shayna, Bron is the somewhat pushy but fiercely caring friend everyone should hope to have, you ache for Lyle and what he went through with his wife and the difficult position he’s in as a father, wary of the truth and how much of it to tell his kids, and even Abigail Cuttler, though she plays such a tiny role in the story, you get a good sense of her heart.

There’s really only one incident in the story that disappointed me, it’s not that cruelty and self-destructive behavior were out of the question for these two characters, that moment just, it felt so typical, and typical is not a word I would use to describe the rest of this book.

Otherwise, there was much to recommend here, like the way the emotional repercussions of violence are depicted, the way these boys love each other romantically, physically, selflessly, the hopeful feeling you’re left with, and the unexpectedly sweet swooniness of “oh, hi, Kurl.”

I received this book through a giveaway. show less

This book.

This is a difficult one to read. It’s full of things that I didn’t want to happen, things that hurt and things that seemed unforgivable.

But this book is about life and life is messy. Loving someone is messy. When you’re young and struggling and hurting ... sometimes your hurt the people who are on your side.

I don’t even know what to write. But this book is beautiful. It’s moving, lovely, terrifying, heart-breaking and .... strangely enough, funny.

Read it.

This book.

This is a difficult one to read. It’s full of things that I didn’t want to happen, things that hurt and things that seemed unforgivable.

But this book is about life and life is messy. Loving someone is messy. When you’re young and struggling and hurting ... sometimes your hurt the people who are on your side.

I don’t even know what to write. But this book is beautiful. It’s moving, lovely, terrifying, heart-breaking and .... strangely enough, funny.

Read it.

teen queer romance written in form of letters traded between a hard-shelled, ex-jock super-senior (should have graduated last year but was kept back) and a picked-on sophomore who is openly gay and who dresses like Walt Whitman on purpose.
Each character's voice is smart and witty, and as time passes you see their tender parts emerge--the love letters they eventually start writing to each other are beautiful and heartache-y (and occasionally pretty steamy). So GOOD! Even if you aren't a Walt fan, this is impulsively readable. You will need to have tissues handy.
*SPOILER ALERT*
*SPOILER ALERT*
*SPOILER ALERT*
potential triggers--lots of trauma sustained by both characters--physical abuse, physical assault, homophobic speech, plus grief over show more loss of mother who turned out to be an opiate/heroin addict. show less

I was given this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers in exchange for an honest review.

We Contain Multitudes is a page-turner with the depth and breadth of a literary novel. Typically, a novel is one or the other; either exciting and plot driven, or guided by character development; either shorter sentences written using common language, or complex sentence structure and language that invokes multiple meanings. This book, written through the eyes of two boys from vastly different perspectives by way of letters to each other, allows for both.

The only downfall of the novel being written entirely in the epistolary form is that at a certain moment the letters become retellings of what the characters are experiencing together. I, and show more other reviewers, felt pulled out of the story at this point. Many chose not to continue, understandably, but the pull of the story was strong enough that I decided to jump back in. Twists in the plot and the somewhat poetic quality of the retelling between the characters made it possible to suspend my belief again, and I'm glad I did.

We Contain Multitudes was a fresh and engaging read that I will keep on my shelf and recommend to others. show less