This is not a book about lesbians.

In fact, it’s not really a book about women either.

But because it deals with gender, stereotyping, and sexual assault, I think it’s a ToughxCookies read.  So let me explain.

I love Laurie Halse Anderson.  Wait, let me say that again so that you understand: I love Laurie Halse Anderson.  She is the woman who wrote Speak, the [brilliant] young adult novel that won tons of awards and garnered a lot of praise back in the early 2000’s.  If you haven’t read it yet, you must (although I must warn you of sexual assault triggers) because it’s phenomenal.  Within a couple of months of reading it, I read everything else that Anderson had written – Prom, Catalyst, and Winter Girls – although I saved Twisted for last.  It had a male narrator.  And not that I have anything against male narrators (some of my favorite books of all time – The Catcher in the Rye, The Little Prince, The Great Gatsby, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, to name a few – have male narrators), but I do tend to have something against gender role switching: when a female writes a book from a male perspective, or vice versa.  Something about it lacks authenticity to me, and I tend to find it forced.  So I waited to read Twisted.  And recently, I finally picked it up.

Within a few pages, I knew I’d write a ToughxCookies article on it – not because it was good, but because I thought it sucked.  I sighed as I pressed myself to continue reading, finding myself annoyed with how “male” the narrator was, and wishing that Anderson didn’t feel it was necessary to make him out to be a chauvinist (the beginning of the novel focuses on his feelings – in his head, and in his pants – about the girls’ tennis team as he watches them participate in a car wash) in order to make him a believable teenage boy.  I was pissed about the gender stereotyping (as men as explicitly, always sexual), and I knew I wanted to write an article on how frustrating it is that both men and women are so obviously, boringly stereotyped, especially from the point-of-view of the other sex.  I wanted to write about how disgusted I was.  I wanted to write about how offended I was.  Hell, I wanted to write a letter to Laurie Halse Anderson herself.

But then I kept reading.

And as the novel went on, I came to learn that the main character, Tyler, was extremely complicated, as well as really conflicted about what it means to be a “man.”  He was stuck somewhere between being the “good guy” and being the “bad guy,” and while he wasn’t sure which he was, no one else did either.  Having gone from being “Nerd Boy” to getting busted (and arrested!) for spraypainting his high school, no one in his life was sure who he was anymore – not his parents, not his best friend, not his schoolmates, and certainly not the girl of his dreams, popular and beautiful Bethany Milbury.  And reading about his confusion about himself was very realistic, because I think that we all suffer with that: trying to figure out who we are (as gendered beings and as LGBT folk), away from the labels that our society and our circles put on us.  And when things started to pick up with Bethany, I was really happy for Tyler, and I found his constant wait-shit-what-should-I-do feelings really endearing.

And then, while I was at the laundromat, something horrible happened to Tyler in the book, and honestly?  I felt like the entire world fell away, and I just kept reading and reading and reading, ignoring that the spin cycle was over, because I needed to find out what happened to him in the end.  “No, Tyler, no, Tyler, no,” kept going in circles in my head, and I just wanted him to be okay!

Because after a really confusing incident at a house party (where a very drunk Bethany asked Tyler to have sex with her, but he told her no because it was wrong, and then later took her home to ensure her safety), Tyler was accused of taking naked pictures of the girl of his dreams and posting them on the Internet.  And all hell broke loose – both at school, and at home – as everyone was convinced that this poor, innocent boy was guilty of the charges held against him.  And as rumors spiraled out of control, so did Tyler’s life, because he had been stereotyped as a bad guy, as a deviant, as an animal.  And so he lost everything.

And I am so glad that Laurie Halse Anderson wrote this novel, because it’s a situation that we tend to ignore, especially as feminists: that actually, sometimes people really are innocent.  And even though Bethany never accused him of sexual assault, everyone else did, and his life was completely ruined over something that he never even did.  I’ve read a few articles in the past few months about this concept, particularly on college campuses: do we assume that men accused of sexual assault are guilty, or does “innocent until proven guilty” apply here, too?  And I think that it’s a wildly complicated issue, because either way, you risk screwing someone over: assuming that she’s lying is horrendous, but assuming that he did it is terrible, too.  So what do we do?

Twisted gave me a lot of insight into an issue that I don’t tend to worry about as much as I should.  And it’s incredible to see the versatility that Anderson has, considering the plot and themes in Speak.  Amazingly, she managed to tell two sides of a similar story, both convincingly.

So I urge you to read it.

Because it’s one of those books that I feel like I just can’t get over, and I’m staring at the next book on my to-read list, sitting patiently on the shelf, and I want to tell it, “Wait.  I’m just not ready for you yet.”