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Sep. 26th, 2017 10:11 pmBenjamin Alire Sáenz's Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is one of those books that I find I like better the more distance I get from it -- not that I didn't enjoy reading it, because I did, but over time I've also sort of come to appreciate the shape of it in a way I didn't necessarily when I first read it a few months ago.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is very definitely a coming-of-age story: Dante Quintana is a kid figuring out his own queerness, and Ari Mendoza, our POV character, is a kid figuring out his ability to make any kind of connections to other human beings at all. Ari doesn't have friends, and doesn't feel like he needs them particularly, but he and Dante meet at the pool and click, and it's good! It's nice! Friendship, that's a thing!
Then Ari happens to save Dante's life, and things get weird; and Dante moves away for a while, and this also makes things weird; and Dante has a huge crush on Ari, which he is pretty upfront about, thus making it less weird but also, I mean, it's hard! People are hard!
Mostly the book is the long slow process of Ari learning to communicate with:
- Dante
- his parents
- some girls at high school who it turns out might actually be (ugh) also his friends
- his new stray dog
- the universe
- himself
- and his angry feelings around the gap in his family that represents his brother, who is in prison
- and his complicated feelings around identity and queerness and masculinity
- and how much he really really loves his dog and his truck and maybe also some people
It's an almost meditative book and only a romance in its ending moments; most of the beats throughout the book are quiet, resonant, and not necessarily where one would expect them to fall.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is very definitely a coming-of-age story: Dante Quintana is a kid figuring out his own queerness, and Ari Mendoza, our POV character, is a kid figuring out his ability to make any kind of connections to other human beings at all. Ari doesn't have friends, and doesn't feel like he needs them particularly, but he and Dante meet at the pool and click, and it's good! It's nice! Friendship, that's a thing!
Then Ari happens to save Dante's life, and things get weird; and Dante moves away for a while, and this also makes things weird; and Dante has a huge crush on Ari, which he is pretty upfront about, thus making it less weird but also, I mean, it's hard! People are hard!
Mostly the book is the long slow process of Ari learning to communicate with:
- Dante
- his parents
- some girls at high school who it turns out might actually be (ugh) also his friends
- his new stray dog
- the universe
- himself
- and his angry feelings around the gap in his family that represents his brother, who is in prison
- and his complicated feelings around identity and queerness and masculinity
- and how much he really really loves his dog and his truck and maybe also some people
It's an almost meditative book and only a romance in its ending moments; most of the beats throughout the book are quiet, resonant, and not necessarily where one would expect them to fall.
