(courtesy Arsenal Pulp Press)
For some people, working out where they fit in life in easy – one look and they know where it is and who they fit in with and they glide seamlessly into place with balletic ease.
But others, and I suspect it’s the majority of people, like the titular protagonist of In the Key of Dale by Benjamin Lefebre, take a good long while to get there, unsure of who they are exactly and how that influences how they interact with those around them.
The beauty of this beautifully wrought novel, which takes us into the closed-off world of sixteen-year-old gay teenager Dale Cardigan which for all its lack of social interactivity surges with prodigious, remarkable creativity – the protagonist is a superbly talented pianist and singer with a bright future, once of course, he owns it – is how rawly honest it is about how you find your place in life.
Many inspirational stories approach coming-of-age tales as if it’s a matter of one magical piece falling happily into place and then, BOOM!, all the other pieces of the jigsaw follow suit, but In the Key of Dale knows life is rarely that smooth, accommodating or free of obstacles.
It’s complicated too by life experiences, and seven years after his father died, Dale is still struggling to figure out how life works with a mum he doesn’t quite get (and vice versa), a stepdad and stepbrother who don’t gel with him and a school where he isn’t bullied but nor is he embraced either (much of that is down to Sale who purposefully flies massively under the radar).
My ice cream has melted into a lumpy swamp and my Saint-Saëns album is done, so I guess I’ll end here. I don’t think I like him all that much. He’s a romanticist writing in a classical style, and it’s really boring. I think I’ll go look for YouTube clips of old TV shows about former teenage outcasts who go to their high school reunions and feel better about themselves, and hopefully they’ll help me dream about the future.
Your loving son,
Dale
When we meet Dale, he is, unknown to himself, on the cusp of a series of remarkable life-changing things happening to him.
And happen they do but this is where debut author Lefebvre does his job so perfectly and in a way that is relatable to anyone who has wanted to find their tribe but struggled to even articulate who it is they are first and foremost.
What Dale does know is he loves music and in his mind, he just has to get through school and his weird new cobbled-together home, and then his life can really come into its own.
But then he meets Rusty, a seemingly straight kid at school who defies Dale’s inner vow to not connect with anyone and who in turns slowly wrought and quickly summoned becomes the close friend Dale has always needed, even if he’d tell you he never wanted one.
While Dale does his best to keep up his hands-off policy to the world around him, funnelling a slew of churning thoughts and emotions into letters he writes to his dead father (which give the book its warm and rich narrative structure), his nascent friendship with Rusty sets in train a series of changes to the landscape of Dale’s life which force him to realise that getting close to people isn’t a threat or a bother but quite possibly the best thing that’s ever happened to him.
(courtesy official author site)
But this is where get relatably very interesting.
As someone who was bullied horrifically a school – to be clear Dale isn’t bullied, just ignored which suits him, as noted, just fine – it makes sense that if a new friend had come along, I wouldn’t have automatically dropped all my coping mechanisms and defensive posturing.
I would have, exactly like Dale does, adopted a fairly aggressive wait-and-see approach, a strategy that means Dale comes across as snarky and difficult at times, but one which makes sense if you have ever been so deeply wounded by life’s events, as Dale has been by his dad’s death, that the only way to handle things in your mind is to curl into a ball and hide from the world.
So, the reticence to act in response to Rusty’s friendship and the unexpectedness openness to all kinds of other things this ushers in, such as a more frank relationship with his mother who turns out to not be so bad after all, makes perfect sense.
You wouldn’t just open up like a flower and act as if everything is better now; life is neither that immediate nor easy and problem free.
But the beauty of In the Key of Dale is that it makes gloriously and relatably clear that when you do open your heart up to know more about who you are and who you want to bring in as your people that life can do some very wonderful things indeed.
We all did the whole what are you doing here routine, and then Sophie, speaking to both of us but looking intently at me, added, ‘I didn’t know you guys were friends!”
‘Yeah–we’ve been hanging out since your wedding,’ Rusty said easily.
I could have punched him. Of course they’d imagine “hanging out” was code.
Dale is complex, it’s true and he zigs where you expect he might zag, but that is the joy of reading the compulsively page-turning In the Key of Dale.
He makes sense as a full and complete person, a young man figuring out who he is when it comes to love, sex, family, musical talent and a whole host of other things, and watching him stumble through a series of revelatory and also quite ordinary but impactful moments is the stuff of which great coming of age story are made of – and In the Key of Dale is right up there with the best of them.
You will come to love and adore Dale, not because he is a cuddly bundle of neverending joy – he’s a good kid with a great heart but he’s lost in grief and loneliness and uncertain of the way out and reacts accordingly; think a feral dog or cat in a trap in one of those animal rescue videos that are all over social media and you get the idea – but because he is real and honest and true.
It allows anyone reading it to be as well, and so, whether you are in the midst of the teenage years and figuring how, totally and understandably messily who you are, or well beyond those years but still holding onto some big question marks about about who and why you are, In the Key of Dale will speak to you and love you and reassure you in ways that feel like they make sense, that sound real because they are and which are accessible because what happens in the novel is not the stuff of Hollywood fantasy but real life and it frees you precisely because of that honesty and truth.