Ever since before No Going Back was published, I intended to make a space available for people to share their thoughts about the book — positive and negative, under their own names or anonymously, so long as what they were saying was relevant and respectful of me and others. After all, a big part of my reason for writing the book was to stimulate conversation about this topic in the LDS (Mormon) community. How can I do that if people don’t have somewhere to talk about it?
Besides that, let’s face it. As a writer, I’m an essentially narcissistic being: I like to hear what other people thought about my book (especially if it’s good), and I need to hear what people think about my writing (even, or perhaps especially, when it’s bad).
I also hope that this is the kind of book that will make people want to talk about what they thought after reading it. And so, I’m announcing the existence of a new page on this blog, set up specifically for reader comments. You can get to it by clicking the No Going Back Comments link under Pages in the right-hand column. See it right there? It’s waiting for you.
And if you haven’t read my book yet? That’s easily solved. There’s another link in the right-hand column for Zarahemla Books, my publisher. You can order my book by clicking on that link. Go ahead! You know you want to…
Tags: coming-of-age novel, gay, Jonathan Langford, Mormon, No Going Back, reader comments
Since I write specifically for children, I’m not facing all of the same issues. Babies and toddlers in picture books are actually allowed to have indeterminate gender. (They’re wearing diapers and they have no hair. How else are we supposed to tell?) But I do try to stay abreast of what is being published for children and young adults, even though I only look at a fraction of the books I know about, and read a fraction of the books I look at. So I know that homosexual and lesbian themes are increasingly appearing in YA and even picture books. Parents ought to know that these books are turning up in school and public libraries, whether they like it or not. The most recent review of such a book that I read was about lesbian domestic abuse. (Um . . . no, I wasn’t planning to read that one.) One thing that makes NO GOING BACK unique in the currently published literature is the choice that it focuses on. Usually there is the unexamined assumption that a person who is same-sex attracted must act on those impulses sooner or later. The questions are always When and How. In NO GOING BACK, the main character still assumes he has fundamental choices about how he will act. That, in my opinion, is what makes this book important. Of course I can’t say how realistic it is. I myself suffer from Chocolate-attraction. It doesn’t carry the same social and moral baggage of some other attractions, but Chocolate does come with . . . baggage. But I do know that the characters felt real to me. In fact, I’ve been meaning to ask, how IS Paul getting along in his new school? Has he joined any more clubs? Grades OK? Oops, he’s not real, is he?