Against the Rules (or: Do Dads Always Suck?)

I just finished the book Both Can Be True by Jules Machias (Quill Tree Books, 2021). Machias presents two central characters whose first-person perspectives alternate every other chapter. Ash and Daniel are middle-school students navigating the painful and flustering intricacies of childhood, puberty, friendship, honesty, and sexuality. Both do not conform to society's expectations--especially middle school society's expectations. Ash does not conform to gender typing. (She also has synesthesia, which adds a beautiful hue to the narrative.) Daniel does not conform to expectations about how males express emotions. These facets are brought into sharp relief by Daniel's comical and heart-warming attempt to rescue a geriatric Pomeranian (named Chewbarka) from euthanasia.

The story is intriguing, heart-wrenching, funny, on-point, and ultimately redemptive. Mathias keeps the plot moving both by the two-step of a double-first-person narrative and by the sequence of Ash's and Daniel's fraught middle-school choices. Even as a reader who would prefer to avoid meditating on my own middle school experience, I found myself quickly invested in the characters and wanting good for them even as they made (to my adult self) decisions worthy of eye-rolling. Thus Mathias adeptly drew me into a place of sympathy and compassion.

Though many of the difficulties of puberty and middle school play throughout the book, clearly nonconforming gender and sexuality are the main foci. The book's main strength is its ability to draw the reader in, bit by bit, to the confusing complexities of experiencing feelings that do not obey standard historical categories of sexuality and gender. Mathias paints a world in which that confusion affects everyone--not just Ash and Daniel--to some degree. When heart, mind, and hormones work against "the rules," then everyone has a rough time.

The power of the narrative is interrupted only a few times, when post-pubescent experience peeks through the curtain. The character of Sam--the Yoda-figure in this book--seems a little too clear for a middle-schooler. And the occasional phrasing of wisdom surfaces on the lips of Ash or Daniel that seems too tried-and-tested, as if an oracle had spoken through them for the sake of the reader.

The sharpest pang for this reader was the status of men and Dads. The fathers of both Ash and Daniel, the silent-if-present teacher who leads Rainbow Alliance, and the shadowy nemesis veterinarian constitute the entire male adult cast, and all are failures or foils. This feature jumped out at me probably because--full disclosure--I am a Dad, and the father of a middle-schooler to boot. All of the characters around Ash and Daniel--both mothers, Daniel's twin brother, two dog-rescuers (one ill-fated and the other wise and seasoned, both women), a female photography teacher, and even an angry Insta-hater--show signs of development and redemption. While they all struggle with Ash and Daniel, they are drawn into the growing experience of love. Not so the Dads. The closest we come is a psychoanalyzing session between Ash and their mom near the end of the book, in which Ash's dad (who is not present) is explained away in terms of his upbringing.

All other characters have the opportunity to explain themselves, own their mistakes, confess the effects of complexity and confusion on themselves, and make a commitment to greater compassion and love. But the Dads don't. I wonder if this categorizing and sidelining of the Dads (as clueless, absent, and possibly irredeemable) is an unavoidable result of connecting gender categories with patriarchy: To reform the system, the historically dominant gender has to get a time-out. I'll admit that possibility. But I also sense some irony--given the book's successful drive to allow Daniel his full spectrum of emotions--that the Moms are depicted as emotionally sensitive and adept and the Dads are stoic and rigid. As this beautifully wrought novel attempts to shape reality into a place of greater compassion, does it also set Dads, and maybe all adult men, outside the bounds of that compassion?

I find this question especially poignant since my teenage daughter invited me to read it so that we could talk about it. And even before I finished it, the book has served as a great conversation-starter. Mathias' raw descriptions of pubescent experience allows for deep conversational dives into my and my daughter's analysis of the world. The book as inspired talks about gender, social media, and the power of honesty and deception.

As with all good fiction, Both Can Be True causes me to look at reality through a new lens. Machias' portrait feels so real and deep that I am moved to greater compassion for those struggling with issues of gender, sexuality, and belonging--especially for those in the season of life in which those struggles attack without notice and in the midst of so many other questions. But if by being a Dad (and a committed male) I am an intrinsic part of the problem, then what am I to do? Do Dads always suck?

~ emrys