What If It’s Us

Comment:

This book offers a look at relationships in all their complexity, while delving into issues of identity and diversity. There is a diverse cast of characters throughout and a general acceptance of both characters’ sexuality which allows the novel to focus on other issues in depth. A range of sexual orientations and identities are referenced throughout and without explanation, ensuring the book does not veer into overt didactic territory. The book focuses on a dramatic love story with serendipitous encounters full of twists and turns. It explores Ben and Arthur’s budding relationship, but also both characters as complex and from different backgrounds. Ben’s frustrations with his experience of race, of ‘passing’ as white, and feeling outside a performative version of his own racial and cultural background, appear in his own life as well as in his relationship with Arthur. Arthur’s background is contrasted with this: he is privileged and from a different socio-economic background, getting a highly competitive internship at a law office by virtue of the fact his mother works there. Though both characters’ experiences of being gay is for the most part a smooth experience, they experience uncomfortable moments: Arthur’s uncertainty around his straight friend’s acceptance of him and a fraught encounter with a man on the subway being key among them. Yet, overall the novel’s focus is not on sexuality as a ‘problem’ but the complexity and difficulty of relationships, and the possibilities within the idea of continually rewriting and starting again. Sexual consent and mutual trust is also explored through Arthur and Ben’s relationship.