Will Grayson, Will Grayson

Will Grayson, Will Grayson (Heretofore referred to as WGWG because that is a long title,) by John Green and David Levithan, is about two boys named Will Grayson and each author writes from the perspective of one Will and they alternate chapters. Eventually Will meets Will and lives are changed. At least, that's what the officially summary says. And that is what the book is about on the surface, but in a more meaningful way, its about Tiny Cooper, the very large and very gay best friend of Green's Grayson, but that's really tangential to this review.

The strength of WGWG is by far the characters. Every character is the book is well rounded and sympathetic and flawed and lovable. The Wills are different enough to be interesting without being so different that it seems contrived. Even the villainous Mara has redeeming qualities. I was especially pleased by the way that the parents of the Will's were portrayed. It would have been easy for any of the parents to come across as somewhere between callus and monstrous, but instead they read as full and realistic, just like all the other characters.

WGWG is not free from flaws. It has some of the genre cliches of teen fiction. Both the Wills are very much typical young adult characters. They're outcasts, they're both to some extent loners, and they both have limited emotional responses -- Green's Will doesn't care, and Levithan's gets mad. It could be argued that teen characters are written that way because teens are that way, or that out-casted loners make the best characters because they're on the outside looking in, but the cliched nature of the characters did sometimes detract from the emotional content of the story.

The emotional content, by the way, was fantastic. It was incredibly moving and poignant and candid and charming. I could go on for pages, but I think that's enough.

7/8