This sort of crossroads—not straight enough, not lesbian enough—perpetuates the loneliness even more. While perhaps it is self inflicted—would other lesbians really outcast Nell like she fears?—that doesn’t make it any less real. At her current school, she knows she will be remembered as nothing other than “Nell the Lesbian.” At Smith, she wonders if she’ll even be recognized as lesbian. This paradox is crushing, and one I know all too well.

Something I appreciate about Idlewild is how it realistically handles Nell’s moving forward. She doesn’t have a magical happy ending. There are points when she still feels pangs of loneliness. But in her college years, she finds a partner, and later in life she reconnects with a high school classmate who has since come out as gay. Through Nell, Idlewild assures the reader that while it might not be okay at present, someday it can be. It can be. Being queer is being queer enough.

So much of homophobia is portrayed in the media as extremes—a parent tossing a child to the street, someone being downright bullied. And these things are terrible. They deserve attention. However, until Idlewild, I’ve failed to find media that adequately captures the more nuanced struggles of queerness. In other words, I’ve never been able to explain to my parents why there was a sort of existential loneliness for me without having a solid queer community in my high school. But Nell gets it, and James Frankie Thomas clearly gets it: even when surrounded by those who are accepting, it is highly possible to still feel othered. Reading Idlewild made me feel seen.

4.5

Setting: new York
Rep: fat Jewish lesbian protagonist; queer/trans Jewish protagonist; multiple queer and POC side characters

This has been sitting on my Netgalley shelf for more than a year and I am glad I finally got round to it as it's a great book! A very slow read, heavy on the characters and light on plot, but I did feel invested in their lives and relationships and mishaps.

Definitely readable with interesting main characters (there's a "Nell and Fay" in every high school and they CAN be insufferable), but it feels as though so much time was developing these characters that a really great opportunity was missed.

LOVED! So original and thoughtful I can't stop thinking about despite reading months ago. Will look forward to more from this author.

I loved a lot about this novel: the exploration of close friendship in high school, the theater plots, the queer and questioning focus. The two POVs worked well to explore the relationship, and there were some honestly laugh out loud hilarious moments in the writing here. I was distracted, however, by the focus on the "current" story as something anchoring, when the past felt revelatory enough.

I burned through this in a single sitting and saw a lot of my early high school experiences reflected back. There was some story that felt dropped, but overall I found it a compelling exploration of self destructive queer friendship

A brilliant, incisive debut that depicts gender and sexuality with a degree of nuance that I've found in few other books. Idlewild captures the way that the stories we tell about both ourselves and others can both allow us to see certain truths and prevent us from seeing others. I think more could have been done with the present timeline of the story, but even so, one of the best books I've read this year.

Being queer in the early 2000s was not easy to do and also at the time of the Twin Towers the moment that shook everyone to the core. It was very emotional and a tear filled book. If you want a good heartfelt book about being queer starting in the 2000s then this book you should pick up i recommend this book.

thank you netgalley for the arc!

i was really excited about this one based on the blurb, and there were things i enjoyed about it. i found certain elements of it incredibly relatable - maybe as a queer millennial, maybe as an artsy school survivor, who knows! but it was easy to read and i devoured it quickly.

I suspected this book wouldn’t be for me, and I was right: I can tell from literally the second page. Am I giving up too soon? Maybe, probably, but life is too short and I have too many other books on my TBR. I might come back to this when I’m in the mood for it. Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the ARC!

This week’s headline? I lay with Cassio lately

Why this book? “smutty fanfic written over AIM”

Which book format? ARC

Primary reading environment? Train and bed

Any preconceived notions? Not really

Identify most with? “quickbright and alive”

Three little words? “the tacit arrangement”

Goes well with? Queer subtext in media, slash fic, teenage angst

Recommend this to? People who felt like an outcast in high school

Other cultural accompaniments: https://www.nylon.com/life/idlewild-james-frankie-thomas-interview

I leave you with this: “Everybody’s got a thing,” I said. “Or so Stevie Wonder has led me to believe.”
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Idlewild is a different sort of prep school novel that I could relate to, even though I barely have anything in common with the two main characters. Thomas’ writing is fresh, hilarious, and heartbreaking (in a good way). I love how the characters are so full of life and I felt like I could’ve gone to high school with them. I also love how the friendship between Fay and Nell starts off in a strange but realistic way but then becomes a frayed rope that eventually splits in two. Teenage friendships can be difficult to write about but Thomas has it perfected. I’m looking forward to his next novel and highly recommend this one.

Also, I didn’t realize that I had actually read something by Thomas before reading his debut novel and it’s an unconventional confessional essay about Mr. Brightside by The Killers.

https://astra-mag.com/articles/i-wish-i-could-stop-thinking-about-mr-brightside/

Idlewild is available now.

****3.5/5⭐️’s
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“i had never seen idlewild from such a distance, let alone from a bird's-eye perspective. the school looked too small to contain my life, yet my life up to this point had taken place entirely within its red brick walls. i had a sense of my whole existence shrunk into a snow globe.”
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set in early 2000s manhattan, idlewild’s central focus is around nell and fey, instant best friends and seniors at a quaker school where they call their teachers by their first names and no grades are given. nell is obsessed with fey, and fey is obsessed with gay men. the girls spend their time in school plays, instant messaging, and writing fanfiction. when a new boy transfers to their school after 9/11, things begin to spiral out of their control. told from both fey and nells perspectives looking back, we get a first hand account of their memories from this intense period of their lives.
•
N: "okay, so, percentage-wise, how many people in the world are gay?"
F: "ten percent, supposedly, though if you adjust for the closet it's probably more like, i don't know, a hundred."
•
as a queer coming of age story, idlewild had the potential to resonate deeply with readers who have struggled with their identities within the lgbtq+ community. i personally connected with nell’s journey, as i could relate to her experiences and found aspects of myself reflected in her character. the author beautifully captured the atmosphere and culture context of that time, providing a vivid backdrop for the story and the quaker aspect added a unique element. despite these positive strands, i personally felt this book as a whole fell a little short of its potential, leaving a number of boxes unchecked for me.
•
“the world had cracked wide open and you could kiss your best friend and you would still be yourselves, the music would keep playing, the show would go on.”

this stunning, tragic, devastating, deeply queer novel earns an easy five stars from me.

set in a high school in NYC in the years just after 9/11, the story follows best friends Nell and Fay through their senior year of high school, as they navigate college applications, high school theatre, their relationship, a new friendship with two slightly younger boys, and their respective experiences of queerness.

the writing was simply stunning — beautifully crafted, clever, and creative. the characters, even the minor ones, were real and vibrant and memorable. Thomas beautifully captures a moment in time which I was not quite part of, but was deeply recognizable to me all the same, and the atmosphere and setting are gorgeously rendered. the tone is at times funny, at times tragic, and always exactly where it needs to be. one of the final chapters was so viscerally rendered that I literally gasped out loud; reading it felt a little like getting hit in the stomach, after the rest of the book felt rather like tensing up in anticipation of the coming blow.

on that note: this was an excellent book, but not an easy one. it is a queer tragedy, not a comedy or a happily-ever-after kind of story; elements of the ending were bittersweet rather than completely ruinous, but I will echo many other reviewers when I say it really, truly was devastating.

I can’t recommend IDLEWILD highly enough; I think it will be competing for “best book of the year” for me, and will certainly make the top ten. I am extremely grateful to Abrams Books and Netgalley for the advance copy!

Phew. Alright, it took me a few days to gather my thoughts on this one and I'm still left with mostly this: intense and a bit heartbreaking.

This book takes us through the friendship of Nell and Fay, two high-schoolers attending the Quaker school Idlewild in NYC. The evolution of the characters as queer individuals hit me so hard in this book. They both grapple with their own identities and where that places them within their larger communities. The way their self-discovery manifests is so often destructive and while that was tough to read at times it felt so real. I'm still struggling to capture my thoughts in words but this will stick with me for a long time.

Throughout the entire book there was not one moment I lost interest. This book was intensely honest and perfectly described being a teenager and growing up. This is one of the best executions of multiple perspectives I have read, every transition flowed and made sense. F&N's high school experience is what I always wanted, even though it was not perfect it was real. The strength of friendship is something I will always find myself longing for.

I LOVED this book! I loved how fast paced this book was. I couldn't put it down! I highly recommend this.

In 2000, Idlewild -- a small private school in New York City -- is its own oasis. With no grades, a small class (many of whom have gone to school together since kindergarten), and a practice of calling teachers by their first name, it can often feel far removed from the world occurring beyond the school walls. But the events of 9/11 pull the school and its students closer to the world outside -- and causes two of the students, Fay and Nell, to begin an intense, year-and-a-half long friendship. Looking back on this period of their lives as adults, Fay and Nell separately confront the ways that their friendship shaped not just the rest of their high school experience, but the rest of their lives

This was a thoughtful, well-written exploration of the classic themes of a prep school novel through the lens of how this period of time shaped Fay and Nell's experiences and their understanding of the other and themselves in distinct and profound ways.

Highly recommended.

Easily my favorite book of 2023 so far.

Idlewild feels like it was written for me, specifically. There are so many details that ring so true to me and mirror my own experiences, and I mean like.... little tiny things that made me feel like I was basically reading my own story. Just one example: a performance of the school musical is canceled because of the Iraq invasion. SAME! (I also went home and wrote about in my LiveJournal.)

But that's not what makes this book ring true. They just make the bigger things (the discovery of identity, the struggle for connection when you're an outsider, the desperation for approval from the people you're closest to) hit harder.

Slow going at the start, but worth the effort. As a GenX-er I'm not the target audience, but the feeling and portrayal of NYC Millennials in High School one year after 9/11 captures their angst and relationships well. Excellent presentation and format, with exceptional writing and descriptions.

James Frankie Thomas focuses in on a very specific time in one's life (high school, small Quaker school), location (NYC), and time (9/11 and the year after) to highlight friendship between two teens Fay and Nell. After the morning of 9/11, they begin a year and a half's long intense friendship. The book toggles between the two individuals in the present and as they reflect back on the past. As the reader knows from the beginning that their friendship fractures, we see how things derail with Fay and Nell. They get cast in the school's play and become obsessed with two other male students, which upends their codependent bond.

This book is a true time capsule- for an elder millennial like myself the livejournal entries and AIM chats bring me back to high school as well. I am curious someone coming to this book who is younger will get the same kick out of it. This book is darkly funny at times and a bit absurd. Some of the antics the characters get into are over the top, and the true obsession Fay and Nell have with queer (specifically male/male) culture was a lot, though that does highlight the continues journey both of them are on in terms of sexuality and gender.

Thank you to Abrams (The Overlook Press) for the advance reader copy in exchange for honest review.