THE SUNFLOWER BOYS: A Novel
by Sam Wachman
Harper. 352 pages, $30.
NOTHING CONVEYS the brutality and loss of war more than a child’s perspective. Sam Wachman’s The Sunflower Boys captures the enduring nature of love and forgiveness in the face of abysmal grief, along with the confusion and fear of war. The book is a present-day novel of coming-of-age for two Ukrainian boys in love who survive trauma and never give up searching for each other.
Russia and Ukraine have participated in intermittent fighting since 2014, but on February 24, 2022, Russia officially invaded Ukraine. The war presses on, with both sides incurring significant loss of life. Reading this book feels like stepping into the war close to home, not thousands of miles away. It’s difficult to escape its urgency and sorrow as the tragedy drags on. Wachman has crafted a novel that highlights the atrocity by telling it in the present tense through the experience of a young gay boy.
The novel opens with two beautiful epigraphs: one by Soviet screenwriter and director Alexander Dovzhenko, who was born in what is now known as Chernihiv Oblast, Ukraine; and one by novelist Serhiy Zhadan. The narrator, twelve-year-old Artem, loves drawing, his mother, his grand- father, and his younger brother Yuri, and he has a disorienting affection for his best friend Victor. His father, Tato, lives in the United States and is waiting to get a green card. He’s been away for eight years, and the boys wait anxiously for their father to return home to Chernihiv. Artem knows that Tato works in construction because it pays well—more than he made as a cardiologist in Ukraine. They withstand life without him, but the brothers wonder if he knows them at all. His absence lingers in the first part of the novel, adding a subterranean tension that elucidates the consequences of migration.
The families of Artem and Viktor are close, comprising a loving extended family in which Artem considers Viktor’s parents, Natasha and Vasya, to be his aunt and uncle. Viktor and Artem spend most of their time together, both during and after school. Artem sketches Viktor, or they watch scary movies together during sleepovers. As the novel progresses, romantic feelings toward Viktor occupy Artem’s thoughts, and he becomes physically lovesick. Homophobic remarks from their schoolmates reveal the fragility of queer adolescence amid toxic masculinity, and Viktor distances himself from Artem. The honest rendering of homophobia will feel familiar to those who’ve experienced young queer love.
The relationship between Artem and Yuri is equally compelling and is portrayed with emotional intelligence and nuance, showing their deep tenderness and affection for each other. Each is uniquely gifted: Artem the artist and Yuri the intellectual admire and protect each other even at their young age. This situation prefaces the traumatic events that unfold as the story develops, giving those events a greater resonance. Throughout the novel, Artem holds onto his innocence despite the war going on around him. The prose is infused with regional language that renders Ukrainian cultural life with vibrancy and immediacy. Through mythological, traditional, and folkloric references, Artem’s sense of Ukrainian history resides in his experiences with his family and his personal memories.
The beginning of the conflict changes the brothers’ lives forever. Artem is thrust into homelessness and forced into the role of caretaker. The journey to safety is arduous. The sense of displacement caused by armed conflict coincides with the disintegration of family and the loss of innocence. This is a masterful novel that deserves to be read widely, a haunting meditation on loss and communal trauma that offers lessons in resiliency and young love.
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Monica Carter, national program director for LGBTQ Writers in Schools, is based in Upstate New York.
