Gravel Queen [Hardcover]

Tea Benduhn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2003

I look behind me as we walk toward the parking lot, gravel crunching and spraying beneath our feet.

"Whatcha' lookin' at, Aurin? I thought you weren't interested in those guys," Kenney says.

"I'm not," I say.

There is a carefully constructed balance between Aurin and her friends Kenney and Fred. Kenney is usually the one who comes up with things to do -- her flair for the dramatic can make even boring old Greensboro seem interesting. And if she is a little controlling, Aurin and Fred just look the other way.

Aurin has no intention of throwing off their established equilibrium. But when Neila joins their circle, Aurin realizes that she and Neila are becoming more than friends. Aurin and Neila are happy in their developing relationship, but Kenney feels left out. Can Aurin manage to mend things with an increasingly possessive Kenney, without letting her control this aspect of her life?

In this stunning debut novel, Tea Benduhn looks at a teen making decisions about her future while trying not to lose her past.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 8 Up-It's the summer between their junior and senior years of high school for Aurin and her friends Kenney and Fred. Fred has known he's gay for as long as he can remember, but Aurin discovers her attraction to Neila, a new girl in town, as the novel progresses. The plot centers on her awakening to her sexual identity and the difficulty she has in maintaining her old friendships while pursuing the new intimacy. Unfortunately, Benduhn's characters lack enough depth or dimension to engage readers. The teens' activities revolve around hanging out in a park in their hometown of Greensboro, NC, and attending a ballroom-dancing class. The most intense moments in the book come when Aurin describes her physical reactions to the sight, sound, and feel of Neila and they involve so much scampering of squirrels in her stomach and fizzling sensations in her limbs that they seem more like a gastric attack than love. The characters do manage to suppress their possessiveness and jealousies and reach a new configuration of their relationships, but the author neglects to reveal other facets of their experiences. Or maybe these are just shallow kids. Even so, one would imagine that coming to grips with one's lesbianism-or one's lifelong best girlfriend's lesbianism-might involve more introspection than is displayed here. A vague and disappointing novel.
Miriam Lang Budin, Chappaqua Public Library, NY
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Reviewed with Julie Anne Peters' Keeping You a Secret.

Gr. 9-12. In these novels about first love, a high-school girl falls hard for another girl and faces the complicated pain of coming out to family, friends, and to one's self. In Gravel Queen, the author's debut novel, Aurin explores her first gay relationship, and finds that her best friend, a glamorous, possessive drama queen, is jealous. Benduhn focus on Aurin's self-discovery and friendships, closing the novel before Aurin tells her family what's going on. In Keeping You a Secret, model high-school senior Holland, who has a boyfriend, develops an overwhelming crush on Cece. The girls fall passionately in love and a tragic coming-out story ensues. Holland finds herself homeless and alone, except for Cece and a new gay support system.

Both novels, written in first-person, are filled with believable inner monologues and finely tuned contemporary dialogue. Benduhn includes some interesting cinematic references related to Aurin's filmmaking aspirations, but some of her descriptions are over-the-top. Peters' story and characters are more developed. Both books are romantic and layered, and many teens, particularly those with fluid sexual identities, will recognize the questions: Do you have to kiss someone to be gay? What do fantasies mean? Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 160 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing; 1 edition (March 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068984994X
• ISBN-13: 978-0689849947
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,527,421 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Cute, frothy entertainment., July 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Gravel Queen (Hardcover)

This is basically an after-school special in novel form. Well, make that novella form. It's only 150 pages.

The three main characters spend all their time hanging around at the local park, wandering aimlessly through their town, sighing dramatically about how incredibly bored they are. True to life? Sure. Interesting? No.

The protagonist is a bored, sort of passive-agressive girl named Aurin who has a crush on a girl named Neila. (The author apparently has a fondness for weird names.) Her moody, attention-grabbing friend Kenney is jealous of the time she spends with Neila. It's never really explained why. Aurin resents Kenney, but that is never really gone into in depth. NOTHING in this book is gone into in any depth. It's a quick, superficial skim into the pool of teenager-hood.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Book, April 4, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Gravel Queen (Hardcover)

This is a very tender caring book which was certainly written by a caring loving Person. It becomes a page turner. It teaches us to care for one another, forgive and share. Refreshing and confident. Wonderfully written. We need more writers like Tea.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Shallow uninteresting teen drama, March 26, 2007

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Gravel Queen (Hardcover)

I was initially attracted to this book by vague cover and the fact that it was Tea Benduhn's debut novel. I had high hopes that this book would reveal something to me about homosexuality. It didn't.

The book is about seventeen-year-old Aurin and her friends Kenny and Fred. When a new girl, Neila, comes to the tiny town of Greensborough, they decide to start hanging out with her. Aurin and Neila's friendship soon blossoms into something else. The book takes place in four places: the park, the dance studio, the restaurant, and Aurin's house.

This book falls far short of revealing something new about gays and lesbians. All I learned was that girls kiss girls the same way that girls kiss guys. What's new about that? Gravel Queen falls flat most of the time, with the characters not in-depth enough to create an interesting or intriguing story. It is often difficult to see what drives them to do what little they do. Also, Ms. Benduhn's love of strange names (Aurin, Neila, Kenney, Prudence) confuses and frustrates the casual reader. Aurin and Neila's developing romance, which should be the central point of the novel, is also flat. Ms. Benduhn seems to have spent most of her time during the writing of the novel thinking up new sensations for Aurin, which often sound more like a bowel disorder than growing love.

Basically, Gravel Queen is a book that could be good if (a) it had a better plot, (b) better characters, and (c) a different author! I would highly recommend avoidance of this novel.