Absolute Brightness

In the beach town of Neptune, New Jersey, fifteen-year-old Phoebe's life is changed irrevocalby when her gay cousin, Leonard Pelkey, moves into her house and soon goes missing. Secrets abound among family members and friends. Homor helps Phoebe and the reader contemplate and deal with child abuse,

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rape, shop lifting, hate crimes, homophobia, and many other topical issues. Phoebe's narrative is frank and true to her age. Recommned for older teens.

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Leonard Pelkney is a great character...Too bad he dissapeares so soon. Very authentic depiction of a struggling family with all their quirks.

A book that I picked up on kind of a whim. I don't normally read teen novels but this one I just tore through. There were a few weird parts, especially near the end, that seemed really out of place and were as if the author just wanted to make sure people knew he was gay. That being said, it

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treated the boy in a realistic and human way, the emotions very raw and well done. My biggest complaint was that Leo was so ridiculously stereotypically homosexual that I felt he was doing a great disservice to people reading it, by simply going with the most flamboyant stereotype he could think up. Other than that flaw it was extremely enjoyable and had a very good point to get across.

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It's a really big, book but if you bear with the ending is worth it.

Absolute Brightness by James Lecesne is the story of sixteen-year-old Phoebe and the year her younger cousin Leonard changed the lives of her family forever. Phoebe lives with her older sister Diedre and their mother in suburban New Jersey. She works the phone in her mother's hair salon, making

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appointments for a wide range of drab housewives and widows, women who've not changed their hairstyle in decades.

Enter Leonard, Phoebe's "cousin" by marriage, who has no where else to go once his step-father decides he can no longer keep him on his Mexican cattle ranch. 13 going on 14, Leonard is flamboyant. There is a scene in Tony Kushner's play Angels in American where a woman asks the lead character if he is a "typical homosexual." He replies "Honey, I'm STEREOtypical!" This applies to young Leonard. Leonard longs for a pair of rainbow platform sandals but can't find one. So he takes eight pairs of neon flip flops, cuts off the thong part, superglues the mutli-colored soles together and valois, he has a pair of rainbow platform sandals. To Phoebe's dismay, he then wears them everywhere, even to school.

Leonard is an instant hit at the hair salon. He knows exactly how to improve each customer's look. Though his suggestions seem a bit extreme, he has such a winning personality that he is able to convince all of the regular customers to follow his advice. Soon every little old lady in town has a new simple black dress, because a woman needs a simple black dress no matter what her age. You never know.

It's clear from the cover that all is not going to go well for Leonard--"Once Leonard Pelkey disappeared, he was everywhere." But I came to like Leonard so much that I hoped the author would chicken out, and keep Leonard around. No such luck. One night, Leonard goes out for a few hours and does not come back. It's only afterward that Phoebe can see how poorly she treated him. He was an intrusion on her family and he was so over-the-top all of the time that she tried to ignore him as much as possible. For his part, Leonard saw Phoebe as a friend, admired her, wanted her to like him.

In the second half of the novel, as each character reacts to Leonard's disappearance, Absolute Brightness becomes a picture of how such an event affects everyone involved. James Lecesne turns what was a comedy into a mystery thriller that is also a believable and profound character study. Pheobe and Diedre are teenagers going through the typical teenage stuff; Leonard upsets their paths, both by his presence and then by his absence. In the end, Mr. Lecesne has written one of the better Young Adult novels I've read in some time, one of the best gay themed novels I've read this year.

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It is so absolutely, unbelievably heart-wrenching. I fell in love with this book from the start. I was torn apart when I found out what had happened to the boy. I cried so hard and wished it not to be true. I wasn’t disappointed, but I was heart-broken to a certain degree. I don’t think it’s

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possible to dislike this one. I adore this book. It’s the best I’ve read in a long time. I loved that the boy wasn’t afraid to be himself and how he brought life to the town. I hate to say this, but, because of the emotions of this book and the fact that the narrator is a girl, boys may not especially like this one, but I urge them to try it nonetheless. They might be surprised. AHS/EK

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Absolute Brightness is one of the best gay themed books I have read so far. The story is narrated by a teenage girl, who is horrified to learn that her very flamboyant cousin, Leonard, is coming to live with them. She is embarrassed by his flamboyant behavior and dress. Although Leonard gets teased

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and taunted at school, the adults in the book accept him, and he quickly becomes the town favorite at the hair salon. Just when the narrator starts to like her cousin Leonard, he goes missing. The town pulls together with the local police department to try to figure out what has happened to Leonard.

This novel is funny, realistic, and heart wrenching. Lecesne does an excellent job of making Leonard one of the most loved characters of all the books I’ve read this year. The book mimics life when it takes a turn from heartwarming to devastating in the blink of an eye, just like life often does. This novel is a must for any high school library.

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Characters are realistic. Dialog is natural. Well done.

Phoebe lives with her mom and older sister, and they are all shocked to hear that their cousin from Arizona, Leonard, is coming to live with them. They have no idea how to live with a boy, and when Leonard gets there, they all think he's really weird. He's flamboyant, jovial, and Phoebe thinks he

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has all the telltale signs of being gay. Leonard doens't identify as anything, yet--he thinks he's just being himself.

Tragedy strikes when Leonard goes missing and suddenly the whole town of Neptune, New Jersey is turned upside down by trying to uncover what happened to Leonard Pelkey. Phoebe undergoes her coming of age in learning to deal with Leonard's disappearance and grappling between the difference of good and evil.

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I'm struggling with what to say about this one. For 75% of the book, I thought it was phenomenal. Great, believable, and engaging characters with powerful, worthwhile themes and scenes. Fantastic writing and pacing. I couldn't put it down, and didn't want to.

And then, in the last portion of the

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book, that shifted. All of a sudden, it felt like the story was being pulled in a lot of different directions, and the pacing was more frenetic and rushed than engaging. I also got less comfortable with the story--it was believable, but what had felt so natural to the first half of the book felt almost... left behind? As if what the reader cared most about and most engaged with was being pushed aside as less important. It's difficult to write about this without giving away the plot, which I don't want to do, but I can only compare it to the feeling when you're watching a beloved tv show, and all of a sudden the focus leaves one of your favorite characters behind in order to focus on someone else who you find a lot less engaging, interesting, or worthwhile. It's not that the turn isn't believable, but it's a certain weighting of priorities that might come across as annoying, or might, as it does here, come closer to feeling slightly offensive.

There's no other way to say it than for me to state simply that I was uncomfortable with the direction of the ending, and the way priorities/themes were showing up. It wasn't that it all wasn't believable... but it was disappointing.

At the same time, for 75% of this book, I couldn't get enough, and I'm sure others will read the ending differently (and more positively) than I did. I'll absolutely read more of Lecesne's work, and this book will stay with me for a while.

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This is not my favorite YA book in the world, but it is valuable for the discussion of hate crimes against homosexual teens. Unfortunately, there is so much else going on in the book that there isn't a really clear statement made about the crime itself, except that it's very, very bad. It is

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suggested that there is no black and white when it comes to hate crimes, and it's true that the perpetrator in this book had only a shadowy motive at best, but for young adults I think this ambiguity might be translated as boring.

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Another book where the queer dies and it's an uplifting lesson for everybody else. Narrator not likeable. Just way too much crammed into this ridiculous thing.

It's pretty readable, which is why I'm giving it more than one star, but the plot is obnoxious.