'Idlewild' follows a queer, teen friendship in early 2000s New York

NPR's Book of the Day

NPR

Books, Arts

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 9 December 2023

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, two teenagers form a tight bond at their Quaker high school in Manhattan. That's the premise for Idlewild, the debut novel by James Frankie Thomas. But while the girls share an intense common interest in gay culture and fan fiction, their friendship blows up in unexpected ways — something they must reckon with years later. In today's episode, Here & Now's Deepa Fernandes speaks with Thomas about his take on the prep school novel and discovering some giant truths about himself while trying to understand the lives of his characters.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's MPR's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. When I was in high school in the mid-2000s in Brooklyn, I hung out with these girls who were obsessed with gay fan fiction. This is pre-Tumbler, very web 1.0, and they talk about the websites they were on and the stories they were reading. And now I was thinking about them because today's book,
0:22.6	Idle Wild, features these two teen girls in 2000s, New York,
0:27.0	similarly obsessed with homosexuality.
0:29.6	And in this interview with Here Nas Diba Fernandez,
0:31.9	author James Frankie Thomas says something both enlightening
0:35.8	and kind of funny about that era and that obsession
0:39.6	that has me, I don't know, let's say looking back curiously.
0:44.1	Anyway, that's all after the break.
0:46.3	In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life.
0:51.1	Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show,
0:56.6	Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people,
1:01.5	helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR
1:07.2	app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:10.8	Authors often talk about how writing their books helps them to discusses on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:14.0	Authors often talk about how writing their books helps them to discover truths about themselves.
1:17.3	But we'd argue few have made as major discovery
1:20.4	as James Frankie Thomas.
1:22.6	We'll get to that in a moment,
1:23.8	but first, Idol Wilde, Thomas' debut novel,
1:27.0	is set in a Quaker high school in
1:29.0	Lower Manhattan. The book centers around two teenagers, Faye and Nell. Both are shy outsiders.
1:35.9	Faye is obsessed with gay men in fiction and in life. Nell is obsessed with Faye and dreams
	...

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