Canada Reads: Queer Youth Fiction!

Every year, CBC sponsors a literary competition - Canada Reads - which chooses "the book for Canada to read". Five celebrity panelists pick their favourite CanLit and then defend it to the death on national radio for a week. Each day a book is knocked off the list until Canada is left with the champion.

This year's picks (and the people defending them) are: The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill (Avi Lewis), The Fat Woman Next Door is Pregnant by Michel Tremblay (Anne-Marie Withenshaw), Fruit by Brian Francis (Jen Sookfong Lee), Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards (Sarah Slean), and The Outlander by Gil Adamson (Nicholas Campbell).

I've only read one of these books, but I really want it to win.

Fruit by Brian Francis.

Never in my life has a book reached straight into my heart and splayed its contents all over the page in a way that this book has. Reading about Peter Paddington's tortured adolescense was like reading my own diary. The body image issues, the pining, the paper route: it's all there!

That said, as specific as this book is to my own youth, it is a universal coming-of-age story. Even if you didn't go through any of the specific mortifying atrocities of youth that Peter does, you can still relate to the larger issues woven through the book.

I also think it's fantastic that a book like this should be nominated for a national competition like Canada Reads. It's bizarre, funny, sweet, endearing, and more than a little bit gay (even though that's never really stated in its contents, per se).

I think Fruit should win because it is a funny and fresh take on something that has been written about a lot. I mean, let's be honest, we've all read enough coming-of-age/coming-out stories in our lifetime. Yet, Francis' tale is so quirky and real that it is sparklingly new and, often times, quite surprising.

Francis himself comments on his chances of winning by saying: "I feel like I am the complete underdog in this competition, but that makes me feel good. I have a purple book. I was the only purple book in the line-up. Hopefully people will respond positively to the purple book. [...] I'm glad that Peter has been given this chance."

Me too, Brian, me too.

Go out and read Fruit and listen to the Canada Reads debates on CBC Radio, March 2 - 6!