Two Boys Kissing
Ratings26
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings26
Average rating4.3
Based on true events—and narrated by a Greek Chorus of the generation of gay men lost to AIDS—Two Boys Kissing follows Harry and Craig, two seventeen-year-olds who are about to take part in a 32-hour marathon of kissing to set a new Guinness World Record. While the two increasingly dehydrated and sleep-deprived boys are locking lips, they become a focal point in the lives of other teens dealing with universal questions of love, identity, and belonging.
Reviews with the most likes.
Surprisingly rebatable at times. Once I neared the ending, I stayed up late to finish it. It made my heart beat faster, gave me reason to feel grateful and provided food for thought in the form of ample quotable passages.
“They hold hands, feel like they are witnessing something monumental, something that could change things. It won’t, but that feeling, that spirit will live on in everyone here, everyone who sees. The spirit will change things.”
3.5
First of all I loved the Greek chorus and the use of we .but It did not wow me . I liked the characters but I felt distant
But not a bad book
Gathering thoughts for a review
Yet another David Levithan book that manages to hit me absolutely everywhere all at once. I swear, his words are a direct line to my heart (and tear ducts).
Two Boys Kissing is the story of Harry and Craig, Peter and Neil, Avery and Ryan, and Cooper. It's about human emotion, real thoughts and problems faced by people everywhere, every day.
I absolutely love David's style of writing. I've read eight of his books now and they keep getting better. He uses words to create pages of people who are so real, so very palpable. There are passages that I read which made me turn away because they just made me feel so intensely overwhelmed with emotion. I don't know what it is, but David Levithan makes me cry so much. Maybe it's that he seems to be describing my exact feelings sometimes, maybe it's that he creates real people who make me feel less lonely for a while. I honestly don't know why, but I do know that he will always rank as one of my favorite authors.
This story is narrated by a chorus of men who have struggled, men who are no longer living. As other people have said, I guess that could detach from the characters and their thoughts, but I never got that. I always felt in touch with each character and the narration sometimes helped with this.
Avery and Ryan meet at a prom during the early pages. Harry and Craig broke-up before the book's beginning, but they partake in a marathon of kissing to try and beat the world record. Peter and Neil are together and dating. Cooper's not with anybody. There are different threads going on, different people to keep up with, but it never feels hard to do so. The transitions are smooth and the individual story lines aren't clunky or confusing.
There's really nothing to fault here. I just loved it.
Je m'attendais à un roman gay de style “young adult” comme j'en lis quelquefois, le dernier en date était “Boy meets boy” du même auteur. Je m'attendais donc à une histoire d'amour mignonne entre deux garçons. J'ai été agréablement surpris : il y a bien sûr de bons sentiments, c'est la loi du genre, mais c'est aussi très touchant, plus que ne le sont d'habitude les romans de ce style. Sans doute grâce aux paroles des narrateurs, des garçons homosexuels morts du SIDA dans les années 80 et 90, et qui observent désormais les générations suivantes de jeunes garçons qui vivent leur homosexualité au grand jour.
