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I liked Kief Hillsbery's first novel, War Boy...it's hard to resist a narrator who wobbles between sly manipulation of hearing people ("her face definitely goes Hallmark after she reads my note"), and a poignant cluelessness: Because he can't hear a queeny new friend's intonation, Radboy has to look up camp in the dictionary. When was the last time that happened in a gay novel?

Daniel Mendelsohn