Genre: Mystery
LGBTQ+ Category: Gay
Reviewer: Ulysses
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About The Book
Courage, first love, and a secret worth fighting for.
Spring in suburban Finland. Tuomas Ylivire is on the verge of growing up—and trouble.
With a judo kit, a sharp tongue, and the rule-bending instincts of his legendary detective father, he thinks he’s ready for anything. Then Esa walks into his life, truths surface, and everything changes. One throw on the Judo tatami, and Tuomas’s life changed forever.
As friendships strain and secrets unravel, Tuomas must decide who he is and what he stands for. Being gay is normal; being open, brave, and happy takes grit. Between laugh-out-loud moments and pulse-tightening twists, he learns that the toughest fight isn’t on the tatami—it’s for your own heart.
Handful is a fast, heartfelt coming-of-age novel packed with suspense, wit, and big feelings—perfect for readers who love smart queer fiction with humour and hope.
The Review
It’s odd to think of this as the second book of the Pekka Wall series, because Wall never appears in the book and is only mentioned by name perhaps a dozen times. What the book really gives us is the back story of Tuomas Ylivere, the high-energy, red-maned teenage son of Niilo Ylivere, chief of police in the college town where Pekka Wall grew up.
Tuomas’s stormy youth is hinted at in the first Pekka Wall book, but here we get all of it, from his meeting Wall at the age of twelve to his complicated crush on a new boy in his Judo class – Esa Salo, son of a humorless Air Force colonel. What the book becomes is the two-pronged coming-out story of both Tuomas and Esa, as we are drawn deep into their widely diverging family lives.
As a gay man who came out to his family over fifty years ago, I never cease to be fascinated and horrified by how difficult the process can still be for young people. Janus Lucky covers it all, and with remarkable sensitivity for a straight man (who clearly has a big heart and an open mind). Tuomas is a great character; a special young person determined to live his own life. But his parents (Hermione and Niilo, known as Baguette to his friends) and both of his grandmothers play important roles here, and we see how Tuomas’s strength ultimately comes from the love of his family. By contrast, we see how Esa’s fear and insecurity come from his family, despite the support of his outgoing twin sister, Tiina.
To an American reader, one of the chief delights of this book is learning Finnish ways. They are not, after all, so different from what we Americans know, but the details of the Yliveres’ life adds a flavor both distinctive and endearing.
5 stars.
The Reviewer
Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave It to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale, and was trained to be a museum curator at the University of Delaware. A curator since 1980, Ulysses has never stopped writing fiction for the sheer pleasure of it. He created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel to Desmond, is his second novel.
Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of over 41 years and their two almost-grown children.
By the way, the name Ulysses was not his parents’ idea of a joke: he is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant, and his mother was the President’s last living great-grandchild. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City.
