Customer Reviews

Happy Endings Are All Alike: A Novel (Alyson Classics Library)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Two teenage girls in love deal with their sexuality and society's perceptions of their love in this novel. It's funny how this book was written years ago, and yet the same incidents could happen now. Jaret and Peggy were very engaging. Their love was realistic and showed in the pages of the book. So honest was this book that I found myself holding my breath during the attack. No one should be victimized like that, no matter what her sexual orientation is. This book just points out the injustices gays face with every day.

It's about 2 young high school students who through a serious of events fall in love and start dating. They keep their relationship hidden but soon they are discovered and they try to deal with all the negative consequences of being gay in a hostile town.

I really enjoyed this book. It was interesting to read a book about teens that doesn't conform to the usual stereotypes of boy meets girl, etc. Not only that, it was also very powerful in terms of expressing the emotions that the characters felt. This is definitely one of my favourite books and I think that teens regardless of their sexuality (I'm straight) should try and read it at some point or other.

Sandra Scoppetone, Happy Endings are All Alike (Alyson, 1978)

I'm not sure what book the New York Times reviewer who called this a "tensely-plotted thriller" was reading, but it sure wasn't this one. Happy Endings, written before Scoppetone became a mystery vamp of the highest order, is a simple, if somewhat twisted, coming of age tale about high-school romance and all the pain and suffering it entails.

Jaret and Peggy are stuck in the lazy summer before college, in the middle of a romance that's a badly-kept secret from Jaret's mother and Peggy's father (Peggy's father is a widower; Jaret's father is just plain clueless about most everything) and a well-kept secret from the rest of their somewhat conservative town. Well, for a while. Things get nasty when a local boy finds out about the romance and decides that Jaret needs some conversion to heterosexuality.

Scoppetone's a fine writer, for the most part, and the emotions at play throughout the book are clear and well-done. Most of the book's characters are complex, solid, and far from annoying. The one exception is Peggy, who constantly uses the word "gazinga" for... well, everything (think back to the Smurfs and their way of speaking). It gets annoying, and it gets there quickly. But if you can overlook that, this one's worth a look. ** 1/2

It's about 2 young high school students who through a serious of events fall in love and start dating. They keep their relationship hidden but soon they are discovered and they try to deal with all the negative consequences of being gay in a hostile town.

I read this book when I first thought I might be a lesbian. This book left a deep impact on me and I have never found a book so powerful, sad, and so easily relateable.