Two Boys Kissing (2013), by David Levithan

This is another guest review from Rob Bittner, who is doing his PhD on trans and two-spirited youth and youth culture in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University. Thanks for sharing this, Rob.

NOTE: This review is written based on an unedited bound galley provided by Random House on request. Quotations in italics are from this unedited galley, and may change in the final edition.

Two Boys Kissing

If you are a teenager now, it is unlikely that you knew us well. We are your shadow uncles, your angel godfathers, your mother’s or your grandmother’s best friend from college, the author of the book you found in the gay section of the library. We are characters in a Tony Kushner play, or names on a quilt that rarely gets taken out anymore. We are the ghosts of the remaining older generation.  You know some of our songs.

Two Boys Kissing: a simple title for a novel that is anything but. I came to this novel eager to see what David Levithan had in store, and was not disappointed. His writing is still poetic, his characters so filled with brittle humanity that it was difficult for me to put the book down. The cover itself has provoked much discussion, but it fits the plot like a glove, and I have to admit that I was delighted to see it released earlier this year.

Two Boys tells the stories of a number of young men, each separate, but revolving (and evolving) and ultimately connecting in surprising ways by the final pages. We are first introduced to Neil Kim, who is about to have a movie date with his boyfriend, Peter. We are then shown a glimpse into the worlds of Tariq Johnson, finally able to dance without judgment, surrounded by others like him; Cooper Riggs, who spends most of his time on the web, chatting with anonymous men for kicks, but still feeling that something is missing; and Ryan and Avery (whose pink hair says more about him that you might think), who find each other at a gay prom. And finally, we meet Craig Cole and Harry Ramirez, ex-boyfriends whose narrative, I should note, is based on a true story. These two boys are at the center of the story, planning the kiss that will break the current world record of over thirty-two hours.

The novel is narrated by a Greek Chorus of past generations of gay men lost to AIDS. While some cynical readers may find this style to be emotionally manipulative, these voices are crafted with such tenderness that I challenge you, the reader, to make your way to the end without being moved. This chorus of voices bridges a gap and will remind readers what past generations endured, and how current experiences for queer young people is both much more hopeful and yet still brutal and difficult at times.

The narrative weaves through each sub-story, revealing the past and present to us with consistent tenderness, eventually bringing all of the stories together for an intense and emotional conclusion. Although the plot does become quite full in the middle, and some might find it to be overwhelming, I found that Levithan was able to pull the story back from the brink, saving it from being too busy and too big for its own good. There were times when I thought a certain scenario was just too emotional, or another was manipulating me with overly intense emotion, but then I look back at my own life and remember how emotional I was as a teen, and it came back as feeling realistic, though definitely raw.

Craig and Harry are probably my favourite characters overall (possibly because I watched the actual events their story is based on), but it is difficult to play favorites since each young person has his own difficult and joyous story. The tale is universal, exploring diverse and very familiar subjects, from coming out to feeling trapped and alone, from the beauty of a kiss to the hatred it can inspire.  These characters feel and desire, and hurt, and find happiness, and they, like the current generation of young queer people in the world, can overcome bigotry and ignorance.

Possibly the best of Levithan’s work to date, Two Boys Kissing is a truly amazing piece of literature that will hopefully stay with you for a long, long time.

We watch you, but we can’t intervene. We have already done our part. Just as you are doing your part, whether you know it or not, whether you mean to or not, whether you want to or not.

Choose your actions wisely.

Watched (2011), by Cindy Hogan

Another free YA book seemingly worth reading… but ultimately, unfortunately, somewhat disappointing. While part of a series (again: why do authors keep doing this?), it has a cohesive plot that ends when the book ends. So far so good. And it is not yet another teen-with-paranormal-abilities-saves-herself-and-the-world-while-falling-in-love-with-demon novel. Another point in its favour. So what is it about?

Fundamentally, naïve, bullied, insecure Christy earns a scholarship to a political educational field-trip to Washington, where she hopes she will be able to reinvent herself in a more powerful, attractive form. This she manages to do, but only with the help of the more socially and sartorially astute Marybeth. The transformation is sufficiently successful to garner Christy the amorous attention of two (2!) of the boys in her particular cohort. This subplot ultimately becomes almost annoying, as does the repeated references to Christy’s insecurities.

The more interesting—and more central—plot involves Christy and her friends witnessing the execution of the attaché of a State Senator. They manage to notify the FBI, who become involved in both protecting the students and attempting to apprehend the culprits. That the perpetrators of the murder are Middle Eastern terrorists feeds too strongly off of and into American post-9/11 fears, but the crime is fortunately not highlighted as a cultural conflict. The story is an effective balance of teenagers trying to have a good time in their nation’s capitol and young adults in a frightening and indeed life-threatening situation.

After a climactic scene with the FBI, a safe house, and a number of gunshots, Christy’s life returns almost to normal: she has chosen one of the two boys (the more compassionate, honorable Rick over the more intriguing but dangerous Alex), and she flies home to Montana… This would be a fitting ending, with a  small nudge toward a knowledge of Christy and Rick’s future. I really wanted to read the sequel, actually, as the first presented closure yet left the possibilities for future narratives of interest.

I therefore went out and found Protected (2012), and began to read. Then I stopped. Within the first chapter, the rich and overly self-confident Alex relocates himself to Christy’s school, and she is thrown back into the teen angst of being attracted to two boys. But she had made her (wise) decision! The last thing I wanted to read was more of the insecurities and trauma associated with Christy’s immaturity in lieu of a focus on the political intrigue that underlies the first novel in the series. Still, Watched stands alone as an interesting YA novel, in a “TV-drama” sort of way, not requiring a sequel at all…

Truths I Learned from Sam (2013), by Kristin Butcher

Having really enjoyed Kristin Butchers Return to Bone Tree Hill (2009), I was excited to receive Truths I Learned from Sam to review. It was with a bit of trepidation that I began, though, having read the back cover, which informed me that “[i]n a story story about relationships [good] and about how bad things happen to good people [a bit disconcerting], Dani discovers that sometimes the only villain is life itself [ouch].” I wasn’t sure I was ready for another emotional rollercoaster of YA angst. I need not have been worried: my concerns were misplaced, where my excited expectations certainly were not.

Butcher’s depiction of life in rural BC shows a remarkable acumen, if not lived experience. Webb’s River is like so many small interior towns—Spuzzum, Malakwa, Yank, Moyer: little on the road but a gas station, but teaming with life in the woods and hills around them.  Dani learns to ride; she learns to drive an old standard transmission clunker. We can smell the sage in the air she breathes, feel the dust in our throats at the rodeo.

The foundation of Butcher’s novel, though, is her adeptness at character construction and development. Dani is a typical teen in a not-so-typical situation. Her mother is getting married. Again. For the fifth time, actually. We shouldn’t like her mother, and we can understand why Dani might have problems with the relationship. Throughout the novel, though, Dani’s mother shows her love for Dani—however self-centred she may be in some ways—and Dani relies on her mother’s affection and support, which she receives—albeit over her cell phone. Theirs is a sometimes-awkward understanding, but they do understand and love one another. So when Dani’s mother and her new husband go off on a honeymoon to Europe, and Dani is sent off to the Cariboo to her mother’s brother—the “black sheep” of the family whom Dani had never heard of—Dani is more worried about her six weeks in a strange place than she is upset by her mother’s seeming desertion.

Sam, Dani’s uncle, turns out to be one of the salt-of-the-earth individuals without whom the world (and YA fiction) could not survive. Sam’s obvious pride in Dani, his affection, and his hand’s-off parenting attitude help her to grow in a number of ways important to a teenaged girl. He treats her like a young adult, not a young girl, and she responds with the respect and maturity he takes for granted; it is obvious that he has never had a teenager before. When he finds Dani and her new boyfriend Micah kissing, for example, he merely asks “You kids having a good time?” (92): slightly protectively, but certainly not facetiously. Although he watches over her, he knows Dani is in a safe place, in safe hands, and he leaves her free to enjoy her youth.

We watch Dani grow into her place in this new community without the sense of dread that the back cover suggests… almost. There are just enough subtle clues for the reader to anticipate the emotional crisis that comes near the end—which I will not spoil the story by revealing. I knew what was coming, and was saddened by the inevitability. What I did not expect was the heart-wrenching yet beautiful twist Butcher throws in, causing tears of both joy and sorrow. Through the sadness, Dani is left in a calm and accepting emotional space, considering her future with hope and anticipation. While Truths I Learned from Sam provides a strong and satisfying sense of closure, I really want to know what happens in Dani and Micah’s future…

Hockey Girl (2012), by Nathalie Hyde

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 18.3.

Hockey Girl

Unnaturally for a Canadian, perhaps, I don’t like hockey. I did, however, really like Nathalie Hyde’s Hockey Girl. While it does focus on the sport sufficiently to engage die-hard fans, underneath the excitement of the sport, this novel is more about equity, integrity, and solidarity in all aspects of life.
The story opens with our protagonist, Tara, in the middle of a play: her determination borders on aggression, and her sense of fair play is offended by both the other team’s behaviour and the referee’s bad call. As she sits in the penalty box unjustly, we are introduced to her team’s real antagonists: members of the boys’ hockey league who had goaded the girls into a bet, that whoever comes out higher in their own standings at the end of the season has to play cheerleader to the other team the entire next season. Both the boys and the girls picture the result—the skimpy, over-sexualized outfits—should the girls lose. This is a challenge worth winning, certainly.
The real drama of the story lies, however, in the girls’ fight to keep their team together in a highly patriarchal, hockey-mad town. The boys get all the ice time, and their coach only stays around until the scouts come… then he moves on to coach a more prestigious (male) team. The girls ultimately find the help they need from unsuspected sources, including in Tara’s case from Kit, one of the boys’ team’s best players. The story thus contains an amount of romance appropriate to junior high readers, and the way that Kit and Tara relate to one another is both honest and heartwarming. Both young adults have to contend with unfairness, from both their community and their hockey-obsessed fathers, and Tara learns that not only girls suffer from the worship of machismo endemic in the males of her society. The lessons she learns have an obvious extrapolation to issues in the world at large, and Hyde creates an effective parallel in how portions of the community rally to the girls’ side when their ice-time is taken. While the battle is simplified, the issues are not: Hockey Girl scores a goal for women’s rights specifically and for an increased sense of justice and solidarity in general.

The Riddle of Stars, a trilogy by Patricia A. McKillip

It is best to review these three titles as a trilogy á la Lord of the Rings, rather than three separate novels. Series fiction has become so popular in the children’s and young adult literary world that we have forgotten the joy of a good trilogy, which combines the longevity of narrative that series fiction attempts to supply with a story that is well structured and coherent: with a beginning, a middle (climax, change of scene, rising action, another climax, another change of scene and rising action), and an end (a final climax, dénouement, and ultimately great satisfaction for the reader). Series fiction, on the other hand, often lacks the solid structure that leads to reader satisfaction: because it is written without a solid plan in the initial stages, it seldom forms as cohesive and satisfying a narrative. Don’t remind me that Dickens (among others) wrote his novels piecemeal this way, weekly, changing his plot to satisfy his readers’ opinions as he went along… I firmly believe he would have been even greater had he not suffered under such constraints!

To continue. I have not read The Riddle of Stars trilogy since I was a teen, but I cannot think why not: it was one of my absolute favourites, second perhaps only to Lord of the Rings. When I picked it up again last week, I remembered why I loved it so much. Even though I remember the essential plot, I can no longer remember the details, and the story and the world McKillip has created pulled me deep within: I ran with the vesta; I became a tree; I wept with Raederle… No trilogy or series since this—except perhaps K.V. Johansen’s Warlocks of Talverdin—has constructed for me such a complete, satisfying world, mythology, and backstory to the current narrative.

   In The Riddlemaster of Hed (1976), we meet Morgan, Prince of Hed. Morgan’s title means that he is bound irrevocably and immutably by a deep magic to his land. Not until his death—and then equally irrevocably—does his rule pass to his land-heir. But Morgan is also a Riddle Master, sent away from his agrarian homeland to study in the city of Caithnard with students from all the lands in the realm. He is torn between his identity as ruler of Hed—a land and culture that he truly understands and loves—and the three stars on his forehead that appear to mark him as something other than a ruler of cattle, pigs, and their keepers. Ultimately, he has to choose whether to pursue or abandon the riddle that is his identity. In McKillip’s world, philosophy, history, and belief are both bound and explained by the riddles the learnèd ask of each other, and their answers. Morgan has been trained in this world as much as his princedom, but there are riddles that even he cannot answer. He journeys north to Erlenstar Mountain, to seek the High One of the Realm, the only one who can answer the Riddle of his Stars, and his identity. En route he meets and befriends a number of rulers of other kingdoms; these friendships  will serve him well in his future struggles. But when he reaches the apparent end of his quest, the final words we are given are “Oh, no!” There his tale—at least in this volume—ends.

In Heir of Sea and Fire (1977), we return south to Raederle, Morgan’s intended, and the political struggles in which the world is embroiled now that the Prince of Hed has disappeared. While Raederle’s father seeks Morgan in his own way, Raederle and the two other women who love Morgan—the warrior Lyra and Morgan’s sister Tristan—abandon the pattern of their lives to seek him, and the answers to the fate that awaits their world. Parallelling Morgan’s search for identity, Raederle seeks to understand her own heritage, to learn why her wise and loving father made an oath to marry her to the man who could win a contest of Riddles with the shade of Aum of Peven, a great King and Riddle Master. She begins to comprehend her true nature, and to fear it, as much as—or more than—she fears losing Morgan.

In Harpist in the Wind (1979), while Raederle has learned her true name and nature, Morgan still struggles to determine who he is, and why the harpist Deth, whom he loved, had betrayed him so cruelly. The shape changers who pursue him to the corners of the realm, the evil Riddle Master who seeks to destroy him, even his own nature seems to battle against the peace he seeks for himself and his world. Slowly he integrates his abilities with self-knowledge, battling against self-doubt, until in the final moment—almost too late—he learns his true name, and his real place in the natural order of his world.

Cape Town (2012), by Brenda Hammond

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 18.1

Cape Town

The mother of my best friend growing up was a ballet dancer in South Africa before immigrating to Canada. The stories she told came back to life as I read Brenda Hammond’s Cape Town, so similar are the feelings the protagonist Renee has towards her art. But while dancing is Renee’s raison d’être, it is not the central theme of the novel, which spans the year between February 1989 and February 1990: a time when all nations’ eyes were on South African politics and the issue of apartheid. In September 1989, F.W. de Klerk was voted into power; on 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela was finally released from 27 years in prison; on 8 June 1990, the state of emergency was lifted; between 1990 and 1993, de Klerk’s government systematically ended over 40 years of legislated apartheid. The hope that Renee and her boyfriend Andrew feel in the new Prime Minister’s commitment “to creating a new South African free of oppression and discrimination” (323) resonates strongly at the conclusion of their story. We have lived through the struggle, seen through Renee’s naïve Afrikaans eyes. So carefully depicted is the balance between political struggle and Renee’s own internal struggles that even readers who did not live through that historical moment will understand both the horrors and the hope that surged through South Africa in the early 1990s.
Renee Pretorius is the ideal character to explore the issue of apartheid from a psychologically safe perspective, rendering the horrors of apartheid moderately accessible to a young adult audience. Renee is a young Afrikaans girl, from a traditional rural family, recently arrived in Cape Town to begin her studies at the School of Dance at the University of Cape Town. Her conservative religious and social attitudes sit uncomfortably with her innate humanism, and she soon finds herself not only communicating with, but befriending a Coloured student as well as falling in love with a young political activist of British descent. Renee and Andrew’s relationship is adeptly handled: their conflicts are based on a real social chasm, and the reader is never quite sure whether their feelings for one another will be enough to overcome the vast differences in their cultural backgrounds. Underlying all of her experiences and expressions of discomfort, though, are Renee’s strong feelings of social justice and philia, most powerfully expressed in her unquestioning love of her family’s Black servant, Kokodais.
While the dilemma Hammond creates for her characters is alleviated in the final pages, the providential political moment comes after Renee has made her decision regarding her path in life. We are thus left with both a happy ending and a firm belief that Renee has developed a strong social and political consciousness: she knows who she is, and who she wants to become.

The Sower of Tales (2001), by Rachna Gilmore

I have recently given a guest lecture on Children’s Literature of the South Asian diaspora, and I closed with a discussion of Rachna Gilmore’s The Sower of Tales. The class I spoke to was about to begin an investigation of Salmon Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), focusing on its metafictive elements, and Sower of Tales seemed to me to be a perfect text to launch them into the more complex metaphors that Rushdie employs.

The Sower of Tales presents a similar concept—the need for stories in our lives, the death of the imagination equated with the death of happiness—but to a younger, less intellectually mature readership. By this I do not intend to denigrate Sower of Tales; there is absolutely a place for both expressions of this theme within the corpus.

The metaphor that Sower of Tales presents is that of stories as a gift from the Sower, grown bi-weekly on plants scattered about the land. The Gatherer is responsible for choosing an appropriate “story pod” for the evening Talemeet for his or her village. The ripe pods give off a hum, and a talented Gatherer can tell from the hum what tone of story is therein contained. Our protagonist, Calantha, shows great promise as a Gatherer, but is too young yet to apprentice. Nonetheless, when tragedy strikes and new story pods no longer sprout, Calantha is chosen to make the dangerous journey to seek the Sower of Tales, to help right the imbalance in the world that has caused the blight.

When she reaches her destination, she is harrowed to find that the answers are not readily available. The Sower of Tales is losing her power, and can no longer heal herself: she needs Calantha to make another, more dangerous, journey. Calantha learns that an evil sorcerer has twisted the Essences, knotted the winds so that the new seeds that rise out of opened pods, up to the Sower of Tales, are diverted to the neighbouring kingdom. The significance of this is that in Gilmore’s fantasy world, the stories are power, as much as they are a life-force, and the source of culture and tradition.

The Healer Theora tells Calantha that “the Essence of the story pods is tied to the very fabric of our beings” (136), and the Sower of Tales, telling her how story pods first came into being, tells her:

Tales grow, with a life of their own. Words and ideas are like seeds. … the Essence of the story pods comes from the oldest and most powerful of all Essences—the life-spark, the Essence of creation itself. … And so, over time, the Essence of the tales enmeshed and interwove with all the other Essences linked to that life-spark, strengthening them, too—strengthening unity and love, joy and creativity and hope. (231-33).

The corollary is that without the story pods, the world will be blanketed in despair, like the poisoning of the Rushdie’s Sea of Stories… In the final scenes, in a flash of insight, Calantha understands:

The Plainsfolk must, they must learn to tell the tales. Tales from the story pods, yes, but more—they must also learn to tell their own tales. Mend their own hope, stoke their own strength. Oh, they must learn to tell their own tales to fuel their own joy and delight … And when the story pods returned—if the story pods returned—they must still keep telling their tales. That was how the tales would be saved. It was the only way the tales would be saved. (416)

The Sower of Tales can be seen as representing the birth of an oral tradition: stories are no longer given to the people by magical beings, but now must be created by the people, for the people: humanity in Gilmore’s fantasy world has now taken responsibility for its own happiness or despair, its own future narrative.

Parallel Visions (2012), by Cheryl Rainfield

Parallel Visions was available for only 99¢ on a website for ebooks, which seems rather odd, as many cheap or free ebooks are, to be candid, complete trash. I found Cheryl Rainfield’s Hunted to be a gripping story of trial and compassion, so I was interested in what I might find from a cheap ebook by the same author. While Parallel Visions is shorter, at 96 pages, it is equally imbued with a sense of the power of human connection, of how love and compassion ground us within our realities, no matter how alternative those realities may seem.

In Parallel Visions, the protagonist, Kate, is asthmatic; not only that, but every time she has an asthma attack, she sees visions. These visions sometimes reveal the past, sometimes the present, and sometimes the future. It is the future visions that disturb Kate most, because whenever she tries to prevent injury to someone else, she is scoffed at, disbelieved, or worse, ultimately blamed when the horrible predictions in her vision comes true. Kate hates being “the sick kid” at school, and pushes herself harder than she should. When she is helped in an attack by the boy she likes from afar—Gil—she has a vision of both her sister and his: both in future trouble, both safe at the moment. Unlike others, Gil believes her. Together, Gil and Kate work to save their sisters, and in so doing build a relationship founded on trust (with, of course, the requisite amount of teenage romance). Kate ultimately brings on an asthma attack to learn more about what will happen to their sisters, and readers are asked to consider the cost of helping others: at what point is it more important to look after yourself? Is it worth risking your own life, knowingly, to save another’s? While Kate ultimately answers this question unequivocally, the narrative leaves room for consideration by the reader. Kate’s relationship with her family, and with Gil and his, teach her the value of her own life as part of an organic whole that is not only family, but community, and the greater world.

Winter Shadows (2010), by Margaret Buffie

A perfect book to read right now, when shadows are lengthening so early in the day: the air is crisp, our hands thawed by warm breath that hangs in a cloud before dissipating. These days, I can easily imagine Beatrice, “huddled under a pile of buffalo robes” (1) as we first meet her. I have never lived in the prairies, being from the mountains of BC, but Buffie’s descriptions are so vivid that I can see Beatrice’s world, and Cassandra’s more modern version, and feel the difference between the two eras they lived in. I am not by nature adept at creating images from descriptive texts; I generally get a strong feeling for characters in books, but have a problem visualizing their settings. I recognize this as a failing in my role as reader, and am thus overjoyed when an author’s descriptions are effective enough for me to really see the world she creates.

Buffie’s setting carries her carefully designed plot along with it; her ability to intertwine her modern realist stories with the paranormal connections that are the vehicle for growth and learning does not seem to wane. As in her other stories, in Winter Shadows emotional support comes to Cassandra through discovering the truth of Beatrice’s life. Cass is facing the first Christmas with a new step-mother and annoying younger step-sister; she feels betrayed by her father, abandoned by her dead mother, righteous in her anger, and justified in her acting out. While we do not necessarily agree with her—from an adult perspective—we can see why she feels and does what she does… Teen readers would undoubtedly not only sympathize, but empathize with her position, her attitude, and her behaviour. Buffie contrasts Cass’s modern familial problems with those of a young Métis girl, Beatrice, in 1856. Beatrice has returned from school in the East to St. Cuthbert’s, Manitoba, to live with her father and his new wife, Ivy. Ivy, like Cass’s new stepmother, Jean, does not share a culture with her new husband. Beatrice calls her “puritanical” (20), and certainly she has no love of—let alone respect for—Native cultures, including Métis. Beatrice’s story is presented as a combination of conflicts: she suffers both as a daughter with a new step-mother, and as a Métis who loves her grandmother and her culture, yet sees it denigrated by many in her community, including her step-mother. Cass, living in her ancestral home that was also Beatrice’s, begins to see visions of Beatrice’s life, as Beatrice does of Cass. The connection between the two young women causes both of them to doubt not only their sanity, at some level, but also their instinctive emotional responses to their world. Learning of the cultural and social prejudices with which Beatrice suffers helps Cass to put her own problems into perspective; seeing visions of the comparatively strong and emancipated Cass helps Beatrice to stand strong in the choices she has to make.

Layered beneath her plot, Buffie has created a narrative of mid-nineteenth-century Métis culture that is part of a resurgence of and thus growing interest in the Métis historical narrative. Another admirable author in this vein is Jacqueline Guest, whose Belle of Batoche (2004) and Outcasts of River Falls (2012) are more straight-forward historical narratives of Canadian Métis life. I’m not sure if there are others, but these three novels speak strongly to the need for the Métis narrative to be told, to be reconstructed in a way that provides ready access for modern young readers. Winter Shadows, with its combination of carefully researched history and language, and Buffie’s as-always insightful interpretation of modern youth and the issues they face, is for me the perfect combination of reality and metaphor, modernity and paranormal history. While I do not love (understand? identify with? appreciate?) Cass as much as I do Frances Rain, I believe Cass speaks as strongly to young girls today as Frances Rain did almost 25 years ago.

In the Hand of the Goddess (1984), by Tamora Pierce

The sequel continues Alanna’s adventures, and at the end reveals her gender identity to those around her. Pierce continues with her ability to cast Alanna as a successfully ungendered individual until the middle of the book, when both George and Jon, who know her as a girl, begin to show interest.  Alanna’s response at this point becomes less credible than her earlier lack of interest was.  Kristin Cashore deals much more effectively with the balance between female sexuality and independence within a patriarchal society in Graceling (2008).  Still, Pierce’s writing is good, and the story compelling, albeit less successfully in this book than the first.