The New Kid
by Eliot Schrefer
Simon & Schuster. 288 pages, $25.
THE NEW KID opens with Humphrey—named after the Casablanca actor, he explains—experiencing the dread of being “the new kid” in town and school. Fifteen years old and recently moved from California to Florida, he describes the first trip on the school bus, the trouble of making friends as a teenager, and the promise of being able to reinvent himself if the need arises. And for the first third of Eliot Schrefer’s second novel, Humphrey’s voice is engaging and observant. He contemplates the fact that he’s a skateboarder—a Californian—in a Florida surfer town, and he decides that it may be better to be the cool kid’s confidant rather than the cool kid himself. However, his friendship with (and crush on) hunky schoolmate Wade gets Humphrey into trouble. At a party Wade gives at his mom’s place, Humphrey is severely beaten by Wade’s mother’s husband and he ends up hospitalized with injuries.
However, rather than pursue Humphrey’s story, and his reflections of shame about being a victim, The New Kid shifts gears and Humphrey’s estranged half-sister Gretchen becomes the protagonist. Alas, the story goes off course, never to recover. Even when Humphrey reappears in the third act as a “new kid” in Italy, his doings yield little pleasure. As the selfish and self-indulgent Gretchen takes over as narrator, we discover that Humphrey’s prelude was just background for another, less interesting story. Surely, Schrefer could have streamlined getting the siblings together if his purpose was to tell Gretchen’s story as well as Humphrey’s.
Gretchen’s section does make her a “new kid” of sorts, so maybe there is some truth in titling. A TV actress, she lands a part on a series and meets Rajan, a member of the crew. They begin a hot and heavy romance, and she’s embraced by his family. Following college graduation, she meets up with Rajan’s parents, Gita and Mr. Lansing, in Europe—they bought the lovers tickets—but by now the pair has broken up, so Rajan does not make the trip. At this point the dynamics between Gretchen and Gita go from sisterly to sinister, and her relationship with Mr. Lansing alternates between flirtatious and fearful.
The New Kid does endeavor to draw some parallels between Humphrey and Gretchen, for what they’re worth. Both feel abandoned by their mother (they have different fathers), and each finds temporary happiness through the mother of a male friend. Humphrey spends time with Brandy, the attractive mom of Wade, a guy he’s attracted to, while Gretchen is chummy with Gita, who raises her almost as if Gretchen were the daughter she (Gita) never had. Humphrey’s relationship with Brandy gets him into trouble, while Gretchen and Gita’s bond is broken when Gretchen discovers that Mr. Lansing has a penchant for affairs with teenage boys.
Schrefer spends too much time presenting Gretchen’s whining, moping, and generally bad behavior, making it difficult for the reader to care about her, and we find ourselves longing for Humphrey to re-enter the story. But when he does, in chapters that alternate narrators between him and Gretchen in Europe, he’s mostly trying to escape from his past victimhood in Florida, hoping that his half-sister, whom he barely knows, will be able to save him. The problem is, Gretchen lands him in an even more dangerous situation, as now he must fend off Mr. Lansing’s sexual advances. Why Humphrey is so loyal to Gretchen is never clear; and why his homosexual encounters—one with Wade in Florida, another with Mr. Lansing in Europe—end in brutal violence is a troubling question. Furthermore, Humphrey’s feelings about his sexuality are unclear: he tries to convince himself that he’s not gay but admits that he gets an erection at the most inopportune moments (such as when being raped by Mr. Lansing).
The New Kid may benefit somewhat from its multi-narrator approach—Humphrey’s perspective when he arrives in Europe validates our negative impression of Gretchen, Gita, and Mr. Lansing as presented in previous chapters—but to what end? Readers are stuck with these awful people treating each other badly right up until the big confrontation on a boat, all of which allows Schrefer to dispense some nautical terms before the expected violence occurs. But the final confrontation does not provide sufficient reason to slog through this disappointing book.
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Gary M. Kramer is the author of Independent Queer Cinema (Haworth).
