SHAMPOO UNICORN, nice YA story with a surprisingly successful gimmick

SHAMPOO UNICORN
SAWYER LOVETT
Hyperion (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$18.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Shampoo Unicorn: (noun)
1. A shower hairstyle in which one styles their lathered hair into the fluffiest soapy unicorn horn possible.
2. A podcast by two mysterious hosts exploring rural queer life--the isolation, the microaggressions, the boredom, and occasionally, the sky-shattering joy.

In the small town of Canon, West Virginia, most people care about three things: God, country, and football.

Brian is more into Drag Race, Dolly Parton, and his gig as one of the mystery hosts of his podcast, Shampoo Unicorn.

Greg's life should be perfect as the town's super-masc football star, but his secret is he's just as gay as Brian.

Leslie is a trans girl living in nearby Pennsylvania, searching for reasons to get out of bed every day. Her solace is listening to her favorite podcast. . . .

When a terrible accident occurs, it's Shampoo Unicorn that brings the three teens' lives together. And what begins as a search for answers becomes a story of finding connection.

Sawyer Lovett's powerful and ultimately joyful debut novel is about three teens, one podcast, and carving out a rainbow pocket in an otherwise red state.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Mixing three tenses to mark the three major PoVs...well, not likely to thrill me. I've referred to the "Satanic second" and the chest-pokey 'you'" often enough to set up a serious takedown of a story that mixes first, second, and third persons in one narrative.

I didn't hate it.

Wait! Before you call the butterfly-net-bearers, let me explain. First-person Brian is out, gay, and proud...he gets to tell us his story face-on because it will cost him nothing he isn't used to paying in terms of acceptance of himself and by others. Brian is so fully inhabiting his queerness that he podcasts about it.

Like someone who never quite faces you as you talk to them, studly Greg puts distance between his internalized homophobia and his powerful queer desires every way he can. Using the intimate, yet distancing, second person is a very effective way of starting to own his "shadow" side, the part of himself that he knows is there but has no map in his world for bringing forward. He's learning the secret that hiding something is bringing it to the center of your identity but without honesty.

Poor wee Leslie! She's trans in a culture that fears the mere mention of transness. She, quite logically, speaks in the third person of "Leslie" until she can find her way out of a multiply-locked prison of biological maleness. She is protecting Leslie, nurturing her, bringing her up in a sense until she can be in a place that is less risky to life and limb.

So there is a reason for this initially awkward splitting of tenses. It's also the case that I'm very old, and don't need klaxons to figure stuff like this out...the fifteen-year-olds this book is aimed at could use a nudge like this to think more deeply. Interspersed with direct address come transcripts of podcasts Brian does to reach isolated gay people. It makes the story's stakes feel immediate in this highly mediated age we live in.

I found myself enjoying this read more than I'd feared I would after discovering the unorthodox narrative strategy. It is a book I hope reaches, physically reaches to be explicit, its intended audience. In the prevailing climate of rage and hatred being stoked from so many corners, it could prove a lifeline to some badly in need of one.

Please, if your gaydar pings around a young person, please gift that young soul this story as a lifeline.