The Flip Side

Rating:
Summary: The Flip Side
Review: Fifteen-year-old Robert Hunt is confused after playing Shakespeare's Rosalind in a skit for English class. He liked dressing as a woman and he's good at it. It gives him a confidence that spills into his regular persona as Rob, allowing him to finally go out on a date with Milena.

They attend a gender-bending party, where he discovers that Milena likes dressing up as a guy and his best friend Kevin comes out of the closet.

Robert begins to doubt his new personality after his father learns of his cross-dressing. But he enjoys being Rosalind; how can that be wrong? When he begins to lose sight of who Rob is, he finds that there is a place for all the sides of his personality.

Readers will see that people do not necessarily fit under just one label; rather, they have many layers, or sides. While THE FLIP SIDE does a good job at illustrating the gray sides in everyone, the ending comes almost too quickly and neatly to be entirely believable, leaving readers with a few questions.

--- Reviewed by Amy Alessio

Rating:
Summary: Weird, but Interesting
Review: I was able to read this book by buying the British edition. I didn't get a lot of the Britspeak , but the story made up for that.

Robert Hunt is a teen confused about his true identity. This book brings up some good points, especially for people confused or curious about who truly they are. It also brings up some interesting philosophical points. During a class discussion on Shakespeare, they talk about gender stereotypes and how boys would dress up to play girls roles in classical theatre. The story moves on to deal with Robert discovering his feminine side and his friend coming out about his sexuality - both topics not usually discussed in YA lit. I think the book handled them well.

I found this book too short. It wasn't perfect, but it was still a fairly good (albeit an easy) read.

Rating:
Summary: Reduces gender issues & suicide to plot of bad 80s sit-com.
Review: This young adult novel is message writing at its worst. Our hero is Rob, a cross-dressing, heterosexual teenage boy living in a small English suburb, whose parents have swapped roles, dad stays home and cares for Rob, while mom is a busy executive running her own software company. His father seems to be perennially wearing a 'butcher's' apron as he cooks, cleans, shops, and clucks over Rob. Why not a chef's apron? Why an apron at all? Did the author feel that the word 'butch' would be subliminally inferred? Not likely. This author is too unimaginative for that sort of cleverness. The parental role reversal is merely a device which the author uses to hammer home his message. He doesn't seem to believe his own message or else why make the dad such a sniveling prat?

Rob's mother is never home more than a few days at a time yet she seems magically in tune with her son when something is troubling him and manages to have more than a few heart-to-heart chats with him. See, a woman can have her cake and eat it too!

To judge by their conversations, Rob and his friends are remarkably insightful for adolescents. Oh sure they have their quarrels, tiffs, and misunderstandings, but all these problems (including homophobia and a failed suicide attempt) are resolved in a few moments of heartfelt dialoguing. Here's a sampling:
" 'I don't know what you're going through, Kev. I have no idea what it feels like to be gay.'
'It feels like being human, only you get persecuted for it.'
'Yeah, but you don't have to believe that the people who persecute you are right.'
Kev's eyes flashed resentment. 'That's easy for you to say, Rob. You straights don't know how easy you have it. This is your world. Turn on the TV, what d'you see? Boy meets girl, parents and children---even in the ads. Gays are only allowed if they tell jokes about themselves.'
'Us straights don't have it all our own way, Kev.'
'Don't you?'
'No. Just before your mum rang, Milena gave me the boot.'
I hadn't meant to break down, but I did, and it was Kev's turn to put his arm around my shoulders.
It didn't matter that Kev was gay and I was straight. What we'd believed would drive us apart brought us closer together."

Rob has been on only two dates with Milena at this point yet he is reduced to sobbing in his friend's arms when she breaks up with him? The only way this scenario works as fiction is as a plot device for a gay porn video.

The writer treats the serious issues of sexual identity, gender crisis, and suicide as if he is writing 'A Very Special...' episode of a bad 80's sit-com. Worse, he betrays his own message (and ultimately the reader) when Rob apparently sacrifices his cross-dressing in order to keep his girl. He has had his hair cut short, donned cowboy boots, a thin tie, and a duster. "We were talking gunslinger; we were talking John Wayne and Clint Eastwood; we were talking smell my pheromones!"

And later, during the soulful reunion...

" 'Rosalind's still here, Milena. She's me. I don't need a costume to be her. I mean, take away our clothes and what have you got?'
'Indecent exposure?' (cue laugh track)
'You've got a boy and a girl--basic fact that can't be changed without expensive surgery. The rest is open to negotiation. Clothes don't make us what we are, we do!'

The author has managed to reduce a complicated gender issue to a stupid platitude. This (mercifully) brief novel reads like one, big, stupid platitude. AVOID!!!

Rating:
Summary: The joy of self-discovery
Review: While the plot was sometimes predictable, sometimes simplistic, sometimes convenient, I enjoyed this book for at least opening to me transgender issues. I think it would certainly be beneficial for gay teens to read to know that they're not alone in the struggle with their wonderful gift of sexuality, that there are both highs and lows in working out who they are, that there are allies to walk their journey with them, but, most of all, unless they embark on that journey they'll miss out on the delight that results when they discover their true self.