Queer Book Club - Idlewild: A Novel

Hey Everyone!

**Welcome to Queer Book Club!
We read books about, for and written by queer people! Follow us on Instagram @queer_book_club

Our next meetup will be held on Tuesday March 10th at Young Ethel’s in Park Slope BK

This month we will be reading Idlewild: A Novel by James Frankie Thomas
**

James Frankie Thomas’s Idlewild is a darkly funny story of two adults looking back on their intense teenage friendship, in a queer, trans, and early-Internet twist on the Manhattan prep school novel.

Idlewild is a tiny, artsy Quaker high school in lower Manhattan. Students call their teachers by their first names, there are no grades, and every day begins with 20 minutes of contemplative silence in the Meetinghouse. It is during one of those meetings that an airplane hits the Twin Towers.

For two Idlewild outcasts, 9/11 serves as the first day of an intense, 18-month friendship. Fay is prickly, aloof, and obsessed with gay men; Nell is shy, sensitive, and obsessed with Fay. The two of them bond fiercely and spend all their waking hours giddily parsing their environment for homoerotic subtext. Then, during rehearsals for the fall play, they notice two sexually ambiguous boys who are potential candidates for their exclusive Invert Society. The pairs become mirrors of one another and drive each other to make choices that they’ll regret for the rest of their lives.

Looking back on these events as adults, the estranged Fay and Nell trace that fateful school year, recalling backstage theater department intrigue, antiwar demonstrations, smutty fanfic written over AIM, a shared dial-up connection—and the spectacular cascade of mistakes, miscommunications, and betrayals that would ultimately tear the two of them apart.

**At the end of the discussion we can vote on which book we read for next month so bring a queer suggestion.

Make sure to support our amazing host bar, by buying drinks! They are so great to support us so we must do our part in return!

We are a lovely accepting group of queers and allies, and all are welcome!

Our book list is officially too long for meetup and will now live on this google doc!
Queer Book Club - Booklist
See you next month!