Hey, Dollface

By: Deborah Hautzig

Narrated by: Tara Sands

Val and Chloe just don’t fit in at their fancy private school in Manhattan. Together, they ditch school, visit cemeteries and thrift shops, spend their days trolling the city streets, and have sleepovers during which they confide all their secret thoughts - like whether they believe in God, which guys they’re attracted to, and how Val feels after she gets hit on by a man she babysits for. Lately, Val has all kinds of questions. Especially about sex. So Val turns to the two people who have always given her the most honest answers possible: her mother and Chloe.

Unfortunately, not even Val’s mother - an adult! - has all the answers. Val starts to think that maybe she’s not "normal" at all. Because she has some other feelings for Chloe. Feelings that she never expected to have. Would Chloe think those feelings were wrong? And her biggest question of all: How do you separate loving someone as a friend and the other kind of love - or do they cross over sometimes?

With honesty and humor, acclaimed author Deborah Hautzig’s 1978 novel is an unforgettable exploration of friendship and love - and all the invisible lines that come with them.

©2012 Deborah Hautzig (P)2012 Brilliance Audio, Inc.

What a bittersweet surprise-

I downloaded this audiobook because I was doing some research...I am probably so far outside of this book’s audience demographic that I might as well be on another planet. And yet the story, particularly as performed by Tara Sands, took me into itself...
It is amazing how an author call summon real people with distinct personalities into existence, they become, if you are lucky, your friends... but when the book is finished they fade away again, and you are left to mourn their departure. I found it very painful to watch Chloe and Val fade back into fiction’s ether, and a full day after finishing the book I still miss them.

Other reviewers here have pointed out that this book is not a manifesto, it is not an unequivocal call for gay rights, or an exit from the closet [There are also some plot points from 1979 that boggle a mind reading the book some forty years later] - it is a story of confusion, blurred lines, and uncertainty.

But it is real, and it is woven of the same passion from which young friendships and young love are woven. The boundaries between the two can become unclear, as they do here. And the memories are sweet and painful and joyful and melancholy all at once...and although it hurts, you wouldn’t trade it for the world.

This is not a gay story, a straight story, or even bi story... it’s a love story. Thank you for this little gem.