Title: Birthday
Author: Meredith Russo
Publisher: Flatiron Books/Macmillan Publishing
Length: 275 Pages
Category: Teen Fiction
At a Glance: Author Meredith Russo has delivered another win with her sophomore release, a story of lifelong best friends, a coming-of-age story, a coming-to-terms story, and a story of the courage to face, and then live, one’s own truth in a rural Tennessee town.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: ERIC: There was the day we were born. There was the minute Morgan and I decided we were best friends for life. The years where we stuck by each other’s side—as Morgan’s mom died, as he moved across town, as I joined the football team, as my parents started fighting. But sometimes I worry that Morgan and I won’t be best friends forever. That there’ll be a day, a minute, a second, where it all falls apart and there’s no turning back the clock.
MORGAN: I know that every birthday should feel like a new beginning, but I’m trapped in this mixed-up body, in this wrong life, in Nowheresville, Tennessee, on repeat. With a dad who cares about his football team more than me, a mom I miss more than anything, and a best friend who can never know my biggest secret. Maybe one day I’ll be ready to become the person I am inside. To become her. To tell the world. To tell Eric. But when?
Six years of birthdays reveal Eric and Morgan’s destiny as they come together, drift apart, fall in love, and discover who they’re meant to be—and if they’re meant to be together. From the award-winning author of If I Was Your Girl, Meredith Russo, comes a heart-wrenching and universal story of identity, first love, and fate.
Note: The use of any male-centric markers in reference to Morgan Gardner in my review is in no way whatsoever an effort on my part to misgender Meredith Russo’s character. It is merely a reflection of the progression of Russo’s storytelling and of how Eric and Morgan’s parents referred to her prior to her transition.
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Review: Morgan Gardner is caught in the crosshairs of outward appearance, presumptive gender pronouns and roles, and an inward identity that is not male. In short, Morgan is a young woman who is not free to be who she is, and her pain resonates from the page only in a way that someone who has experienced those thoughts and emotions could translate it. The backlash effect, then, is that Morgan overcompensates to become the perfect son, the athlete whose body is honed into the ideal machine in order to please her football coach dad, and to check off the gender boxes her physical appearance dictates she’s supposed to fit into. In doing so, in an effort to become someone she isn’t, and never was—her parents’ son—Morgan goes numb inside. She drinks to cope and to make the emotional numbing more bearable, and, without intending to, she begins to isolate herself from her best friend, Eric. But even while the distance becomes a palpable thing between them, and Eric doesn’t know the truth of why, he never gives up.
Morgan and Eric have been best friends their entire lives. They share the same birthdate and so it’s tradition for them to spend their birthdays together—always—apart from when Eric had the chicken pox in third grade. The story opens on their thirteenth year, at their joint party, but this time things feel different. If Morgan is a little moodier, Eric understands. Morgan’s mom died of cancer not so long ago, so Morgan has every right to be a little more distant, a little less easy going than before…
But there’s a reason Morgan is grieving and anxious which has nothing to do with missing her mom, a secret Eric couldn’t possibly guess, ever, not in a million tries. How could he, when it’s all so confusing to Morgan? Morgan is carrying a burden that she thinks might ease up a lot if she could just share it with Eric. She even tries to confess the words to Eric, they take shape in her mind and leave her mouth on a sudden but short-lived burst of bravery…and they miss their mark. Eric doesn’t hear them. And that was the last time Morgan would speak that truth out loud for years to come. That doesn’t mean, however, that Morgan no longer struggles with the words that eat away at her guts a little more every day, making her feel broken inside. Morgan fights a battle over what it is that’s so different about her. She toes a line between rejecting and accepting the truth, and, eventually, she gives in to the fear and the self-loathing these feelings have provoked.
The words Morgan could not say out loud, the words that fit best but that were naked and non-conforming and have left her spiraling out of control, nearly ended her life, and I flinched from the punch of dissonance every single time Morgan did. Once again, Russo addresses the very real and vicious truth of suicide. It is not used as a simple method of weaving a deeper pathos into the story, though. It is a means for readers to empathize with Morgan’s pain, it is an integral part of Morgan’s story, and it is a tragic observation that fiction and reality sometimes coincide. Morgan’s breakdown is a terrifying cry for help that reinforces the path to self-acceptance, and it is a pain- and fear-laced process. It is the catalyst, a turning point, and once again, Russo drives home the message that a support system is crucial to Morgan’s survival, including her dad who loves her unconditionally. The author hits on so many salient points in her storytelling—what it means to be in a state of transition, from becoming a newly minted teenager to the awakening realization that there must be something “weird” about the way she feels a disconnect between her body and mind, and on to her struggle of trying to force thoughts, actions, and feelings to conform with society’s default definitions of boy/girl.
Told in dual points of view means that Birthday is also Eric’s book as much as it is Morgan’s, though on different terms. Eric’s life is so intertwined with Morgan’s that Russo was inspired to give him his own voice, and it was the right choice. We watch Eric as his family falls apart, as he acquiesces to his pompous and overbearing ass of a father, and we watch him as he becomes a star on the football field. He starts dating a cheerleader, the way everyone expects him to, but the additional weight of expectations begins to wear on him, and the confusion of his feelings for Morgan piles on as the years go by. We watch as Eric struggles over why, at times, he catches glimpses of Morgan and can’t see the guy he’s grown up with, why his feelings seem to exceed simple friendship. His thoughts leave him confused and make him wonder, privately, if he’s gay. But if Morgan is the only guy Eric has these feelings for, how can he be? Though, there was that single kiss the night they were both a little bit drunk. But that was nothing, obviously. It was the beer, it was a mistake, it meant nothing… Each one of Eric’s chapters serves to weave Morgan’s tighter and to bring home to readers how intertwined their lives truly are.
Author Meredith Russo has delivered another win with her sophomore release, a story of lifelong best friends, a coming-of-age story, a coming-to-terms story, and a story of the courage to face, and then live, one’s own truth in a rural Tennessee town. For those who have read If I Was Your Girl, let me assure you that while Birthday highlights and addresses some of the same truths about being a transgender teen just trying to live her life in an unforgiving climate, the perspective of this novel is unique to itself. It is no less gorgeous than Russo’s debut, but it is not at all a retelling of the same story.
Through years of Morgan’s rejection of her true Self—through hating the body she was born with, hating herself for the thoughts about who she truly was, punishing herself for not being the son her father wanted and her mother expected she would grow up to be, and on to realizing she’s deeply in love with Eric, this story is gorgeous and transcends the boundaries of its Teen Fiction label.
You can buy Birthday here:
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