The Unnameable

Stand in the dark, face illuminated by sparking and falling plumes of red and white, bursts of gold some kids were setting off over in the park, but seeing only Gib. Leaning back on his hands, dirty Adidas sneakers kicked into the grass. Wanting to hate him. Wanting to be him. Wanting to find words to explain how that could be.

Audie Malloy knows he’s not like other boys. At fifteen, growing up on an air force base outside of Ottawa, Ontario, he’d rather spend his time reading library books and spying on his neighbours than playing hockey like his father wishes he would. He doesn’t make friends easily—and something happened with the last neighbour boy, whose family up and left, but Audie isn’t talking about it. Then the Weston brothers move in. Gib Weston is everything Audie isn’t. On the outside, he’s a carbon copy of his older brothers: brash, macho, athletic. He glides through a world that Audie finds excruciating. A world of raunchy locker rooms and casual ribbing and easy masculinity. And yet, as he observes Gib from his bedroom, Audie uncovers a softer side. A boy who secretly devours books, who cares for his sick mother, and who has maybe noticed Audie too. As the two boys are drawn together, the country is divided, with separatism, the flagrant nationalism of Expo ’67, and the military’s “Fruit Machine” creating a manic backdrop of suspicion, disruption, and intolerance. An enthralling, devastating, and uniquely Canadian coming-of-age story, The Unnameable is a heady exploration of masculinity and sexuality, shame and secrets, and an era when being openly queer meant risking everything.