We Are Lost and Found by Helene Dunbar

Abstract

Reviewed by: We Are Lost and Found by Helene Dunbar Karen Coats Dunbar, Helene We Are Lost and Found. Sourcebooks Fire, 2019 [304p] Trade ed. ISBN 978-1-4926-8104-5 $17.99 E-book ed. ISBN 978-1-4926-8105-2 $17.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 9-12 Michael is coming of age as a gay high school junior in New York City in 1983; it’s an exciting time wherein he can dance away his anxiety and meet a cute boy at a club, but friends of friends are dying of a mysterious disease that seems to be targeting gay men, and acts of violence against gay people are escalating. Michael haunts the edges of gay life with his best friends, James and Becky, who are Michael’s key sources of information about the growing threat of AIDS, James through experiences with dying friends that have made him opt for celibacy and Becky through her boyfriend’s mother, who is a nurse. Despite some minor anachronisms in the dialogue and in Michael’s understanding of how the virus is transmitted, Dunbar paints a broad and accurate portrait of the pain of the times through a series of emotional snapshots of a melancholy boy who longs for love, fears for himself and his brother Connor, who is also gay, and spends time with friends who are no happier. Fortunately, a new boyfriend for Connor represents the promise of a sex-positive gay relationship that might make the pain worth it. The rhetorical technique is more a chronology of vignettes than a plotted narrative as Michael slowly works through his feelings about who he wants to be and what he’s willing to risk to get there; readers looking to understand the history that Levithan’s Two Boys Kissing (BCCB 9/13) alludes to and Bausum’s Viral (BCCB 6/19) describes will find support here. Two afterwords by AIDS activists are included. [End Page 16] Copyright © 2019 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois