6 minute read
FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING by Henry Fry
first time for everything
FIRST TIME FOR EVERYTHING
Fry, Henry Ballantine (400 pp.) $27.00 | May 10, 2022 978-0-593-35870-2
Danny Scudd is a 27-year-old Londoner with only a vague idea of who he is. He might be a journalist, if the clickbait content he writes for his job at a culture app counts as writing (he doesn’t think it does). He might be a boyfriend, if only Tobbs, the man he considers his partner, hadn’t sent him to the clinic with a mysterious disease that turns out to be sexually transmitted. He might also be a best friend to his childhood pal Jacob, the biracial, nonbinary performance artist who’s always the center of attention, which is fine by Danny. One thing Danny, whose parents own a small-town fish-and-chip shop, is sure of: He’s gay. But even in his late 20s, he’s struggling to figure out who he is and who he wants to be. For someone who would rather tend to his houseplants than mingle at a house party, those questions feel overwhelming. But thanks to a new therapist, a breakup with Tobbs, an eviction from his flat, and a new home in Jacob’s creative queer commune in East London, Danny is forced to question everything he once knew about himself, his style, and the people around him. A memorable cast of characters helps propel Danny through this pivotal time as he experiences bad dates, becoming an (embarrassing!) meme, an unexpected promotion, and more. The story—told through humorous prose, text messages, diary entries, and the inner ramblings of Danny’s unfiltered mind—is an entertaining, fast-paced read.
A queer coming-of-adulthood story told with humor, tenderness, and quirk.
JOBS FOR GIRLS WITH ARTISTIC FLAIR
Gervais, June Pamela Dorman/Viking (384 pp.) $26.00 | June 21, 2022 978-0-59-329879-4
An enterprising 18-year-old oddball seeks to break into the 1980s tattoo scene. After graduating from high school, Gina Mulley can easily identify the jobs she doesn’t want: bartender; typist; any position that removes her from Blue Claw, the Long Island town where she grew up. She’s reluctant to part from her older brother, Dominic; amid a childhood punctuated by her mother’s breakdowns and her own inability to connect with peers, he’s the only source of stability she’s ever known. Gina spends her time at Dominic’s tattoo shop doing odd jobs, doodling strange, alien fish, and avoiding job applications—till she realizes a tattooist’s career perfectly suits what Dominic dubs her innate “artistic flair.” After much persuasion, Gina convinces her brother to take her on as an apprentice, with the knowledge that making it as a tattooist in an almost exclusively male-dominated industry will be nearly impossible. As Gina tattoos sackfuls of oranges and sketches bizarre tattoo “flash”—crosses made of vegetables; hybrid animals—she meets the enigmatic and spellbinding Anna, the apparent protégé of a local clairvoyant; the two develop a longdistance correspondence that eventually becomes a close-knit friendship, and perhaps something more. As Gina fights tooth and nail to be taken seriously as an artist, she must navigate an increasingly fraught relationship with her brother, who resists seeing her as an independent adult—all while helping the struggling tattoo shop survive. From the start, the novel is immersive and wholly alive. Gervais painstakingly renders the fine-grained particularities of the 1980s body-art scene and locates its deeper emotional core: Tattoos are not just ink, but “something invisible made visible. A truth [that] you were finally willing to have out in the open, to be seen.” Gina is a touchingly complex, flawed character; her journey from childhood misfit to adult is gratifying to behold. Though some of the narrative threads feel underbaked—Gina’s relationship to her mother isn’t believably resolved; Dominic’s relationship struggles lie somewhat apart from the story’s center—Gervais’ characters are original and a pleasure to read; their narrative energy will easily carry readers through to the final page.
An enjoyable romp brought to life by its lovable, off-kilter protagonist.
MEANT TO BE
Giffin, Emily Ballantine (368 pp.) $25.20 | May 31, 2022 978-0-425-28664-7
Giffin’s latest charts the course of true love between an American aristocrat and a troubled fashionista. Almost immediately, readers will guess that Giffin’s protagonist, Joseph S. Kingsley III, a media darling since birth, is a re-creation of John F. Kennedy Jr. In addition to Joe’s darkly handsome good looks, there are many other similarities, such as his double failure of the New York bar exam and his stint as a Manhattan assistant district attorney. But Joe’s late father was an astronaut, not the president, and locations associated with the Kennedys, such as Hyannis Port and Martha’s Vineyard, have been moved to the Hamptons and Annapolis. Instead of a sister, Joe has a protective female best friend, Berry Wainwright. Readers may be so obsessed with teasing out fact from fiction, and wondering if the outcome for Joe is going to be as tragic as JFK Jr.’s fatal 1999 flight, that they may be distracted from the engaging story of Joe’s co-protagonist, Cate Cooper, who is—apart from a superficial resemblance to Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy—largely a fictional creation. When Joe and Cate meet-cute on a Hamptons beach where Cate, a model, is
armored
posing, both are immediately smitten. However, the paparazzi are determined to milk every ounce of scandal from the social chasm separating them. On the surface, Cate is the product of a middle-class upbringing in Montclair, New Jersey, but her interrupted education and her forced flight from an abusive home have shamed as well as strengthened her. Like her real-life counterpart, Cate rises in the fashion industry and becomes known for her minimalist style. The couple’s courtship drags a bit on the page despite witty banter and steamy encounters. It is the conflict brewing when their pedigrees clash, and, particularly, Cate’s consciousness of the disparity, that grips us. Whether these knockoffs can avoid the fates of the originals is the main source of suspense here.
An intriguing meditation on the meaning of “meant to be.”
ARMORED
Greaney, Mark Berkley (512 pp.) $28.00 | July 5, 2022 978-0-593-43687-5
The title doesn’t say much. Greaney could accurately have called this military thriller Bloodbath: A Love Story. Josh Duffy loses a leg doing mercenary work in Lebanon, so three years later he has sunk to being “the sheriff of Tysons Galleria” in Virginia, ashamed that he can’t fully provide for his wife, Nikki, and their two children. She’s an ex-Army captain and chopper pilot who’d been shot down in Iraq and rescued by—wait for it—Josh Duffy. True love and hard times follow; a nasty, failed protection detail in the Middle East leaves the protectee dead and Josh’s life forever changed. Now Nikki is a fulltime mom running a small cleaning business to tide them over. Then Duffy has a seemingly chance encounter with another merc at the mall who expresses shock that “Duff from Jalalabad is a
— Rachel Manley, author of the Governor General’s Literary Award-winning Drumblair
Another voice of distinction from the publisher of The Marrow Thieves.
cormorantbooks.com | Distributed in the US by Orca Books
