Absolute Brightness

James Lecesne
Harper Collins

Reading this mystery about a gay teen who moves to a small town in New Jersey, where he has a positive impact on his new family but becomes the target of violence, I was frequently reminded of Judy Blume. That's a compliment of the highest order. Although mostly written in the 1970s, Blume's books remain gold standards of young adult literature thanks to her sensitive, elegant prose. Like Blume, Lecesne has a genius for sketching his characters with economy while giving them authentic voices. From the first chapter his narrator Phoebe, a young woman blessed with equal amounts of teen anxiety and pocket wisdom, emerges as someone you either swear you used to know, or would like to know. Also like Blume, and unlike many of the recent torrent of queer teen memoirs, Lecesne grounds his story in everyday details and issues, which he tackles sincerely. There's nothing glamorous nor especially tragic about the broken homes and ad hoc families the book is built around; these are just more facts of life the characters are dealing with. (My favorite of Phoebe's unpretentious observations: "Ours was not a house where 'arrangements' were made. We were more the type of family to whom things just happened...everything from the future just seemed to tumble into the present and take us by surprise.") After setting the stage for a gently funny domestic drama by introducing the flamboyant, temporarily homeless Leonard into the lives of the exasperated Phoebe, her distant older sister Deidre, and their harried mom Ellen, Lecesne turns the tables with a plot twist and Absolute Brightness flirts with darkness as it twists into a different kind of coming-of-age story. This is not about Leonard or Phoebe coming to grips with sexuality and romance, but Phoebe's first encounter with tragedy. Lecesne holds on to his low-key tone and optimism even as Phoebe struggles to understand how ugly the world can be. As touching as it is compulsively readable, this book will leave the reader with much to think about.