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Will Grayson, Will Grayson Description:
One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens—both named Will Grayson—are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history’s most fabulous high school musical.
Hilarious, poignant, and deeply insightful, John Green and David Levithan’s collaborative novel is brimming with a double helping of the heart and humor that have won both them legions of faithful fans.
- Amazon Sales Rank: #543 in Books
- Published on: 2010-04-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Features
- ISBN13: 9780525421580
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Customer Reviews:
WhatMissKelleyIsReading: bookitty.typepad.com
Will Grayson (the straight one), has two simple rules: Don’t care too much and shut up. His best friend Tiny Cooper (”he may be the world’s largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world’s gayest person who is really, really large.”) breaks these rules constantly. He seems to fall in love hourly, and he never stops talking. Will, who appears to just go through the motions of his life, follows reluctantly in Tiny’s wake, and finds his social world expanding when he agrees to become the only straight guy in the school’s Gay Straight Alliance.
will grayson (the gay one), is isolated from everyone. He hates his friends and is emotionally shut off from everyone except his Internet boyfriend, Isaac. When will grayson heads to Chicago to meet Isaac on the same night that Will Grayson and Tiny Cooper are there for a music show, their lives and friendships change in unpredictable ways.
The first thing about this book is that it is laugh out loud funny. Not lol funny, which will grayson would hate, but laugh so loud the neighbors probably hear you funny. Initially the wit is restricted to the Will Grayson chapters, but as the novel continues, even will grayson experiences a little humor. I could quote endlessly from this book since there are so many sections that are hilarious.
Another thing to know is that the novel alternates between Will Grayson and will grayson. Will Grayson’s chapters are more conventional, both in style and in structure, while will grayson uses no capitals and is very closed off. These chapters are will’s stream of consciousness interspersed with excerpts from chats with Issac. Initially these chapters are harder to get through and understand, but as the novel progresses and will opens up they become easier to read.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson falls under the genre contemporary realistic fiction, and yet there is just a touch of magic to it. The characters in this book aren’t perfect; they fail each other, and they fail themselves, but ultimately they get back up and try again. Male friendship gets the attention in this novel that I haven’t seen anywhere else, and both Will and will interact with their parents in ways that are realistic and moving. There are no villains here, just as there aren’t many villains in real life. There are simply people who do the wrong thing, who get scared and make mistakes, who let their friends down and then try to pick them back up.
I loved this book. It’s as good as anything that I’ve read this year, and I’m probably going to force everyone I know to read it. This is definitely a book for the keeper shelf.
Once more, with feeling!
Will Grayson has been Tiny Cooper’s best friend since elementary school. Tiny is, according to Will, “the world’s largest person who is really, really gay” and constantly falling in and out of love–and dragging Will with him everywhere. When his latest attempt to hook Will up with a girl fails, Will meets Will Grayson, another teen who is depressed and discouraged. Both Wills make an effort not to feel too much in life, but are changed after meeting, and continue to change as Tiny puts on his extravagant and fabulous autobiographical musical, “Tiny Dancer”, culminating in an unforgettable and powerful night.
John Green and David Levithan have created a very unique, surprising, and downright hilarious novel. The book is told in alternating chapters, and it’s very easy to distinguish which point of view each author is writing from. Their characters are so different, but at the same time the book is very cohesive and engaging. Green’s Will is a lot like some of his previous characters: funny, self-deprecating, and a bit nerdy and self conscious, but he is a terrific friend and an honest person. Levithan’s Will is a bit darker. He is lonely and depressed, and it’s evident throughout most of the book that he is hurting and doesn’t know how to be himself, or even be happy. Each Will possesses his own authentic voice, and the chapters flow seamless together, playing off each other well with Tiny as a good (albeit a little self-centered) central character.
The plot is complex, and the change in each Will may be gradual as each one sorts out their own myriad of problems and issues, but the journey is funny, rough, and best of all, smart (for example, Schrondinger’s cat is used as an extended metaphor throughout much of the book). Will Grayson, Will Grayson is brilliant and intelligent read about love, appreciation, and feeling with an unflinching and bold style that many teens will appreciate.
Cover Comments: I really like this cover! It is very fitting that since there is a musical in the book there is a spotlight on the cover, and the perspective is different. The font is also pretty cool–I like how some of the letters of the title run into each other. This is just a really excellent cover!
Powerhouse of Awesome
I’ve been waiting for this book to come out since it was announced. Some background on my reading history: I love all of John Green’s books and I love what I’ve read of David Levithan. So, naturally, I had high hopes for this awesome collision of genius.
Will Grayson, Will Grayson is the story of two guys named Will Grayson: they are not related, they have close to nothing in common, and neither, in fact, knows that the other one exists. That is, until their volatile meeting in the middle of this book. In a porn store. In life-crumbling circumstances.
As usual with these two authors, the characters are realistically crafted and easy to relate to. There were times throughout the story that I felt myself nodding in sympathy or feeling vindictive hatred for the unfortunately dead-on portrayal of selfishness and angst that’s common in most high school teenagers. What I love about these characters is that they are decidedly fluid individuals who learn life lessons and cry and hope and dissect situations to ridiculous extremes and hold grudges and appreciate love and friendship. This is the kind of book that reminds you what a coming of age tale is supposed to be.
My favorite character was Tiny Cooper. If I had to choose my favorite Will Grayson, I would choose Tiny Cooper. He was just that awesome. Tiny is the very large, very gay, and very fabulous best friend of John Green’s Will Grayson. He has received funding from the student council in order to put on a musical he wrote himself called Tiny Dancer–which is, of course, all about Tiny Cooper. He is the show stealer of the book.
On the opposite end of the character spectrum, I never felt much of a connection with Jane, the love interest of John Green’s Will Grayson. This is probably because I’ve come to expect much of John Green’s girls. I was infatuated with Alaska Young and Margo was a fantastic multi-dimensional character. I had the same sort of problem with Jane as I did with the heroine of An Abundance of Katherines–I just never fell in love with her.
As for Levithan, I’m still pondering why he chose to write his portion using no capitals. I like to think that it’s because his Will Grayson is just too apathetic to care about using a shift key. Authors trying to be innovative with the stylizing their narrative is usually a hit or miss for me. In Levithan’s case, the innovation wasn’t so over the top that it became pretentious, which–and I’m not naming any names–tends to happen.
For what’s it worth, I have absolutely no regrets for paying the twenty dollar price for this book. John Green and David Levithan are a witty powerhouse of a team and I hope that they decide to do more work together in the future. I recommend Will Grayson, Will Grayson to all fans of humorous, romantic, intelligent coming of age tales.
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, April 2010: What’s in a name? A pretty fantastic book idea, for starters. At heart, Will Grayson, Will Grayson is about a couple of kids figuring out how to be themselves. Two of those kids happen to have the same name, and not much in common outside of that, but their serendipitous friendship sets the stage for a much larger, braver, and more candid story than the simplicity of the plot might suggest. The relevance for teens here is clear–high school is the only time in your life when you have the undivided opportunity to obsess over your every move, sentence, and outfit change–but the part about understanding who you are doesn’t stop when you graduate. That’s what makes Will Grayson, Will Grayson as interesting a pick for adults as it is for teens: the questions don’t get simpler, but looking at them through the eyes of a 16-year-old brings a welcome sense of honesty and humor to this thing called life. No one’s ever too old to enjoy that. –Anne Bartholomew
Amazon Exclusive: David Levithan and John Green Talk About Names
Will Grayson, Will Grayson is about two teenage boys with the same name, whose lives intersect in unexpected ways. The book originated with the thought of giving two different boys the same name, and to give that name some meaning. It also comes from David’s own experience. So to give you an inside peek at the making of the book, we figured it would be fun to give you insight into our own names, as well as Will Grayson’s.
David Levithan
To my knowledge, there are only two other David Levithans in the world – my dad’s cousin, and a lawyer in South Africa who, as far as we can tell, isn’t family. The last name Levithan is actually the invention of an immigration official – when my great-grandfather came to America from Russia, it should have translated to Levitan. But somehow the h got in there. Now, whenever I meet another Levithan (which is rare), odds are good that he or she is related to me.
That said, the story of Will Grayson, Will Grayson came from someone whose name is close to mine, but not identical. David Leventhal went to Brown at the same time I did, and people would confuse us often.
This ended up being something of a joke, because David was an extraordinary dancer, while I was…not an extraordinary dancer. So people would exclaim, “We had no idea someone as clumsy as you could be so graceful on stage!” and I’d have to say, “Well, un, that wasn’t me.” Finally, right before graduation, I contacted David and we met up. We became instant friends, and when we both moved to New York after college, we were always in each other’s company. The similarity of our names often threw people for a loop… and I thought, well, that might make an interesting story.
Amusingly, David Leventhal’s college roommate’s name was . . . Jon Green.
John Green
I was named after my great-grandfather, John Michael Crosby, an itinerant minor-league baseball manager and occasional catcher. I like my name, but being a John Green can certainly be inconvenient, because there are a lot of us. Among many others, there is John Green the realtor in Mississippi (who owns johngreen.com, much to my chagrin), John Green the Australian botanist, and of course John Green the world-renowned Bigfoot scholar. This last John Green, who is so revered in the field of Bigfoot research that he is often called “one of the four horseman of Sasquatchery,” is kind of my mortal enemy. I once wrote a magazine article in which I passingly noted that Bigfoot is, you know, fictional, and John Green replied with a letter arguing that my anti-Bigfoot stance was besmirching the good name of John Greens everywhere.
Such is the curse of being a John Green. Or a Will Grayson, for that matter.
Will
We decided that I (David) would choose our character’s first name, and John would choose his last name. I liked the name Will because of its different, sometimes contradictory, meanings. As a noun, it can be so strong – where there’s a will, there’s a way, and whatnot. But as a verb, it’s split. Sometimes it’s just as definite (It will be done!), but that definiteness is underscored by an uncertainty – you say it will be done, but it hadn’t been done yet, has it? And put it at the start of a question (“Will you still love me tomorrow?”) and it becomes the entrance for all kinds of vulnerability. That seemed right for the characters.
Grayson
I liked Grayson because whenever I would hear that name, it always sounded to me like “grace in,” which always struck me as a richly ambiguous phrase – is “grace in” the beginning of a clause or the end of it? Are we being asked to find grace in something, or to let grace in? Those questions seemed like interesting ones for the guy I wanted to write about.
From School Library Journal
Starred Review. Grade 9 Up—Will Grayson’s best friend since fifth grade, nicknamed Tiny Cooper, is bigger than life in terms of his physical stature and his personality—the “world’s largest person who is really, really gay.” Tiny, while seeking the boy of his dreams, has been through the trauma of myriad short-lived romantic relationships and Will has supported him each time his heart is broken. Now, Tiny decides it’s Will’s turn. At first, Will resents Tiny’s matchmaking efforts, but then an amazing coincidence that stems from it brings a new person into their lives. It’s another teen named Will Grayson, who is sad and depressed, and captures Tiny’s heart. While these and other relationships are connecting, intersecting, and eventually changing, Tiny writes and produces an autobiographical high school musical extravaganza that is really about life. On the night it premiers, everything comes full circle and further validates the presence of the Will Graysons. Based on the premises that “love is tied to truth” and “being friends, that’s just something you are,” this powerful, thought-provoking, funny, moving, and unique plot is irresistible. Told in alternating chapters from each Will Grayson’s point of view (one in lower case, effectively individualizing identities), complete with honest language, interesting characters, and a heartfelt, gritty edge, this quirky yet down-to-earth collaboration by two master YA storytellers will keep readers turning pages.—Diane P. Tuccillo, Poudre River Public Library District, Fort Collins, CO
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From Booklist
*Starred Review* Two superstar authors pair up and really deliver the goods, dishing up a terrific high-energy tale of teen love, lust, intrigue, anger, pain, and friendship threaded with generous measures of comedy and savvy counsel. Though the ensemble cast revolves around Tiny Cooper, “the world’s largest person who is really, really gay, and also the world’s gayest person who is really, really large,” the central characters are the two titular narrators, who share a name (but don’t meet until partway through) and trade off alternate chapters. One Will has been Tiny’s satellite for years but is starting to chafe at the role—especially after Tiny forcibly sets him up with Jane, an infuriatingly perfect match. The other, whose clinical depression is brilliantly signaled by an all-lowercase narrative and so intensely conveyed that his early entries are hard to read, sees at least a glimmer of light fall on his self-image after a chance meeting with Tiny sparks a wild mutual infatuation. The performance of an autobiographical high-school musical that Tiny writes, directs, and stars in makes a rousing and suitably theatrical finale for a tale populated with young people engaged in figuring out what’s important and shot through with strong feelings, smart-mouthed dialogue, and uncommon insight. Grades 9-12. –John Peters
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