Is He or Isn’t He? - John Hall

It’s been a terrible summer - Anthony De Marco broke up with his philandering boyfriend in Provincetown, and Paige Crane’s soap star mother once again ignored her in favour of the beautiful people. They embark on their senior year at one of New York’s most prestigious private schools with a pact to find boyfriends by Senior Prom. Anthony, known for his fabulous parties, throws an end-of-vacation soiree and though Felix Fennimore, Peppington Prep’s gossip columnist and Anthony’s arch rival, crashes the party, he brings with him the divine Max Coulter. Paige and Anthony both fall immediately in love, and need to know – is he or isn’t he?
Anthony’s usually reliable gaydar isn’t telling him whether Max is gay or metrosexual, and neither of them want to just come out and ask him (even though Paolo, Anthony’s college-age brother, doesn’t get why not). Instead they try a variety of strategies – from asking Max to star in Anthony’s UCLA-audition film, a coming of age drama about a young gay man, to engineering an all-girls-plus-Max-and-a-hot-tub weekend away at Paige’s parent’s holiday house in the Hamptons – to get Max to reveal himself, then pool information. Gay or straight, one of them will end up with him.
IHOIH is engaging but predictable. The book is a little twee (Peppington Prep?), the characters are likeable enough, and the egotism of moneyed, attractive adolescence nicely permeates the novel and is central to the plot development. The dramas Paige and Anthony have with their families are resolved relatively painlessly; the secondary characters are original but lightweight; the revelation of Max’s sexual orientation is anticlimactic; and I saw the eventual romantic hook-ups well in advance. That said the novel is a refreshing change of pace, in that it depicts a young gay man who is untroubled by his sexual orientation and accepted by his family and peers, closeted at school while he waits to join the more mature and open minded world of college.
It’s not clear from the text if Anthony’s sexually active, and the point is made that Paige is informed but abstinent. As an informed feminist, I’m aware of the inequality of portraying a female character as abstinent and therefore responsible, while not similarly defining the male character, an aspect I mention because it niggled at me while reading the book. Lord knows I’ve read a plethora of more egregiously depicted gender wrongs, but for some reason I was really aware of it this time.
I don’t think I’ll be picking up further writings by Hall, but I enjoyed most of IHOIH. - Alex