(The Horn Book Magazine)
Fourteen-year-old Dave finds that his crush on the handsome gardener
Gene means -- well, we don't know just what it does mean, which is
one of the charms of this leisurely, romantic coming-of-age story
set in 1950s California ranch country. When Dave's parents split up,
he and his mother leave the ranch to live in town; in the spirit
of her newly won independence, she decides to landscape the property
into a glorious garden. Dave is drawn into Gene's intriguing botanical
world of Quercus lobata and Davidia involucrata, and grows himself
as Gene introduces him to Verdi, pizza, and the intoxication of beat-
era San Francisco. Although there is a scene of sexual exploration
between Dave and his older brother, and a hint of some kind of intimate
physicality between Dave and his father, the real sensuality of the
book comes from Dave's never-expressed longings for Gene, although
he doesn't realize that Gene is himself gay until the end of the book,
after Gene has moved on. While some overlong descriptive passages
about gardening occasionally take the focus off the emotional landscape
we,re really interested in, this first novel is a refreshing change
from the more didactic novels about gay teens coming out: as worthy
and necessary as those books are, this one finds an equally valid
truth in uncertainty, and subtly meshes the search for identity with
the search for love.
Sutton, Roger, What I Know Now.(book
reviews). Vol. 73, The Horn Book Magazine, 03-13-1997, pp 200(1).