A Scatter of Light is a vivid and moving story. It follows Aria, a teenager who is abruptly forced to spend her summer with her grandma in the Bay Area. Aria does not expect to make friends or find anyone who truly understands her. But then she meets Steph. Steph, who is already in a relationship. When Aria begins to spend time with the queer community she has found, she questions her own identity. As gay marriage is debated and her connection to Steph deepens, Aria must decide what she truly hopes to achieve this summer.
I absolutely loved this queer coming-of-age story. Malinda Lo is an expert at drawing out the tension between wondering about your identity and the complexity of finding certain people attractive. Steph and Aria’s story is one of heartbreak, joy, shared grief, and exploration. I appreciated how Aria got to choose on her own terms who she came out to and focused on how it made her feel. I loved Aria’s relationship with her grandma and how she maintained one with her deceased grandpa by learning about his astronomy work. I also loved the cameo for Kath and Lily, it made me so happy! Malinda Lo does such a beautiful job with exploring queerness, queer love, and the queer community. There are so many little moments that I identified with, from joy to grief. The details are beautiful and created a story I didn’t want to put down. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys coming-of-age stories and queer love. I love Malinda Lo’s writing and this was no exception!
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A Scatter of Light
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After really loving Last Night at Telegraph Club, I was anyways interested to read what the author was gonna write next, but I definitely couldn’t resist this book at all because it’s kinda set in the same universe. Also, it was very exciting when I won an early copy in Bookish First’s raffle. And this turned out to be everything and nothing like I thought it would be.Firstly, I was definitely expecting this to be a romance, just like Telegraph Club, and I think I should clarify right at the beginning that it is not. This is more of a coming of age story, finding out the truths about yourself, and figuring out your future. It’s about connections and honesty and dreams and art and so much more. It’s a slice of life story about family and friendships, so it moves at a sedate pace, taking us on a dreamy journey. We also get interludes philosophizing about art and artistic expression and music and astronomy and more, and I absolutely devoured it all. But there was something about it that left me a bit unsatisfied and I don’t know how to put a finger on it.Aria is the sole POV that we get to read here but I felt like we were at a remove from her, and I never got to know her properly. She felt things deeply but also seemed completely detached at times, and I wasn’t sure how to understand this dichotomy. I also feel like I get to understand my own asexuality better when I’m reading a book like this, where the character is figuring out her own sexuality and I can see how I felt at that age was so different. I could also definitely empathize with her wanting to understand herself better and also trying to live on the edge between her past and her future.Through Aria, we also get to know the people who influence her. Her artist grandmother Joan becomes a source of inspiration for Aria in this summer before college, making her want to explore her artistic side before going to study for a science major. Her mom and dad also make small appearances though they have very different kind of relationships with Aria. Joan’s genderqueer gardener/musician Steph evokes a spark in Aria, completely changing her perspective about what she could be. Their connection is immediate and intense and they had some of the most evocative and bittersweet moments in the story. Through Steph, we also get to meet her other queer friends and see Aria discover the queer community and the solidarity that exists, against the backdrop of the overturning of Prop 8 by the Supreme Court.I thought this book works great in contrast to Telegraph Club. In that book, every gathering of the people of the queer community was an act of defiance and even acknowledging one’s sexuality felt almost impossible - it was amazing to see how much California has changed in the intervening 5-6 decades, the amount of visibility the queer community has, and the heartwarming solidarity that is depicted through the Dyke March and the Queer Music Festival. It shows that things have changed for the better, maybe not everywhere and not for everyone, but they are better.Overall, this is a beautifully written story that moved with its stunning prose. While I may have liked a bit more depth in character relationships, it works very well as a bittersweet tale of first love, loss, grief, sexual awakening, finding your dreams and holding onto them. It will transport you to its tranquil California setting and make you wanna get lost in it. I definitely feel like I wanna visit this side of SFO - who knows when that’ll happen - but hopefully I’ll get to read Malinda Lo’s next before that.
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