Peter by Kate Walker

From the Publisher

Pressured by his peers and society to conform to the stereotyped macho image, fifteen-year-old Peter feels both confused and repelled. His confusion and his horror increase when he finds himself attracted to his brother’s best friend, David, who is gay. Here is a daring, exceptionally honest novel about sexuality and the need to be true to oneself. Peter shares his every muddle and perception with us, and his candor just might help us find our own way.

Publishers Weekly

Reminiscent of Diana Wieler's Bad Boy , this initiation novel set in Australia convincingly describes a boy's confusion about sexuality and manhood. In order to be accepted by his peers--including a group of rough bikers--Peter, an honor student interested in photography, hides his sensitivity and his reluctance to have sex with a girl he does not love. The discomfort he feels playing the role of tough guy turns to panic when Peter finds himself drawn to David, a gay friend of his older brother. Matters become even more complicated when classmates start calling Peter a ``poof'' for refusing to break rules set by his mother. Many readers may be surprised by the chauvinistic attitude of Australian society as presented in this novel, and will have no trouble empathizing with Peter's emotional turmoil and ultimate victimization. Walker remains notably objective in her depiction of homosexuality, stressing that each person's attitudes and needs are different. At the end of this sensitively wrought book, Peter is still struggling with his identity; he has, however, learned to accept and respect himself as a growing individual. Ages 12-up. (Apr.)

KLIATT

It's no wonder that 15-year-old Peter can't get a handle on his sexual identity. Walker has populated this Australian novel with insecure, moronic males and grasping girls. Peter, a son of divorced parents who lives with his mother and older brother, is rattled by his attraction to his older brother's friend David. Given Peter's single-parent household, removed but bullying father, and the lowlife that make up his peer group, one can see this attraction may be more a matter of a need to be friends with a considerate and caring male than a question of sexual preferences. How to know? Young people are especially vulnerable to identity issues, and the current plethora of options for those choices can make it all the more confusing. Ultimately, Walker allows Peter the time to figure out the nature of his interest. Sometimes this is just what young persons need, to know that time can help to sift and sort out life's confusions and options. This may be a good choice for a classroom discussion. Talk, review, and debate could focus around the possible effects and repercussions of categorizing and making judgments based on ingrained attitudes and conditioned responses, as well as the possible additional complications created by single-parent households. KLIATT Codes: J—Recommended for junior high school students. 1991, Houghton Mifflin, 229p. 18cm. 92-18948., $5.95. Ages 13 to 15. Reviewer: Linda Piwowarczyk; Romeoville, IL , July 2001 (Vol. 35, No. 4)

School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up-- When readers first meet Peter Dawson, 15, his ambitions are simple: finish school, get a road license for his dirt bike, and find a job with cameras. But then he meets his older brother's friend David, and suddenly nothing is simple any longer. For David is gay and Peter gradually realizes that his strong attraction to the college student means that he, himself, might be gay. Set in Australia, Peter is a powerful and memorably universal novel of an adolescent's struggle to discover his sexual identity. In the land Down Under, as everywhere, it's an agonizing process. The society he inhabits defines sexuality only in terms of ignorant and mean-spirited stereotypes. If being gay is to be a ``poof'' (as his friends contemptuously put it) and a social outcast, being straight and socially acceptable means repeatedly engaging in dangerous feats of derring-do on your dirt bike and in urgent, impersonal sex with girls you hardly know. Fortunately for Peter, he finds, in David, not a stereotype, but a warm, caring individual. He also discovers that sexual identity is one of the most complexly ambiguous aspects of being human. Indeed, at the book's end Peter is still uncertain about his own sexuality, and at David's suggestion, he is prepared to give himself more time to make his own discoveries. In this first novel, Walker has created a wonderfully rich work of fiction filled with incidents that illuminate the difficult choices of her sympathetic and multidimensional characters. Not every troubled adolescent will have the good fortune of meeting a friend like David, but, with luck, many of them will find self-understanding and self-respect through reading wise and compassionate novels like this one. --Michael Cart, formerly at Beverly Hills Public Library

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