Other people may be surprised when Kit, who has never acted before, wins the lead in the high-school play. But he isn't. He knows the truth: he's been acting all his life, pretending to be straight. Things become increasingly complicated for the closeted teen when his difficult costar, Lindsay, falls in love with him, and their play, Talk, a hard-hitting drama about political repression, excites controversy and parental attempts at censorship. The action of this ambitious novel moves along briskly when it alternates between Kit and Lindsay's points of view, but it becomes message-driven when pages from the play are periodically included to reinforce the theme: that the self is revealed no matter what. Fortunately, Kit's true self is interesting and sympathetic enough to hold the reader's attention through the occasional didactic patches, and the author's nicely realized denouement is both
life- and self-affirming.
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