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Terre Haute
A year in the life of fourteen-year-old Jared McCaverty of Terre Haute, Indiana. Jared, comes from a wealthy family, is a bright and attractive young boy, but is overweight, socially awkward, and gay. Can a teen like him find happiness in America's heartland?
288 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1989
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 4, 2018
Set in the early 1960's this is a powerful tale of awakening teenage sexuality, and the impact that it can have if used incorrectly, which is just as relevant today as it was then.
September 22, 2025
(Since posting my review below I have come across a selection of excerpts from reviews at the time this novel was published and I am reproducing them because reviews like these used to be the essential guide to new novels and it is almost impossible, unless have access through a research library, to reviews from the pre-internet era.
"Compelling...memorable...Aitken's skilful achievement is to unpeel the layer's of Jared's character so that he moves from victim to seducer and yet retains the reader's sympathy. Forceful, sexually graphic, and dark - an unusual and intelligent debut." - Kirkus Review
"Will Aitken's first novel, Terre Haute, is as addictive as a box of chocolates, although it isseldom as sweet...Stinging...tragic...permanently haunting." - Totonto Star
"Aitken's spellbinding first novel traces a year in the life of its narrator, teenage Jared McCaverty. {The author} renders Jared's voice near perfectly, thereby making 'Terre Haute' a first-rate portrait of an adolescent poised to wreck or realize his potential." - Booklist
"{Terre Haute} is an explicit, unforgiving, and unsentimental book that is also very good on the horrors of family life." - Sunday Times (London)
"Witty, lively, and challenging, Aitken's novel takes us into the not-so-developed mind of the teenage hero as he begins to learn about what lies beneath the surface of the family." - Bay Windows (Boston)
My Review:
'Sex, for a young boy, is a great discovery. But when a young boy is betrayed by love, sex can become a powerful weapon—especially when used against a married man. I’m going home and I’m going to tell my father exactly what you did to me. Set in the Indiana town of the same name, Terre Haute is the story of one very memorable year in the life of Jared McCaverty, who has just discovered sex but has yet to discover what it means. Spoiled by his family’s wealth, Jared is able to live in a world of fantasy—filled with movies, art, and daydreams. But when his thoughts of other boys begin to turn into reality with an older man, Jared comes to realize the implications—the very real perils—of his sexuality.' I found the above on a Belgium website selling copies of this novel and I thought it a much better description then the one on GR.
I hate to dwell on the reviews on GR but they are incredibly disappointing and maybe some of that has to do with the emphasis later editions placed on Jarred's affair with the closeted gay married man. If you read the review from Publishers Weekly when it first came out :
'Set in the Indiana city of its title in the early 1960s, this debut novel attempts to explore the implications of the narrator's burgeoning homosexuality. Fourteen-year-old Jared McCaverty both profits and suffers from precocity; he sees the emptiness of the world of his privileged, materialistic parents, yet craves their approval...'
gives a different and I think more accurate assessment of what the novel is about, because it is very much about being 14, facing the problems and challenges of 'growing-up' and in an undidactic way puts the reader right back into the early 1960s in the mid-west of the USA (though it could be provincial anywhere) and makes you live the reality of discovering and coming to terms with being gay when there was absolutely no help or support available and who you were was an affront to the people you love most. I found the scenes between Jared and his father some of the most moving I have read. It is sad to think that when this novel was first published in 1989 there were only hints that things were changing. That they did change is wonderful, but that in 2025 so many people want to go back to those bad old days is not simply sad, but tragic.
I do believe this is a fine and very underappreciated novel.
"Compelling...memorable...Aitken's skilful achievement is to unpeel the layer's of Jared's character so that he moves from victim to seducer and yet retains the reader's sympathy. Forceful, sexually graphic, and dark - an unusual and intelligent debut." - Kirkus Review
"Will Aitken's first novel, Terre Haute, is as addictive as a box of chocolates, although it isseldom as sweet...Stinging...tragic...permanently haunting." - Totonto Star
"Aitken's spellbinding first novel traces a year in the life of its narrator, teenage Jared McCaverty. {The author} renders Jared's voice near perfectly, thereby making 'Terre Haute' a first-rate portrait of an adolescent poised to wreck or realize his potential." - Booklist
"{Terre Haute} is an explicit, unforgiving, and unsentimental book that is also very good on the horrors of family life." - Sunday Times (London)
"Witty, lively, and challenging, Aitken's novel takes us into the not-so-developed mind of the teenage hero as he begins to learn about what lies beneath the surface of the family." - Bay Windows (Boston)
My Review:
'Sex, for a young boy, is a great discovery. But when a young boy is betrayed by love, sex can become a powerful weapon—especially when used against a married man. I’m going home and I’m going to tell my father exactly what you did to me. Set in the Indiana town of the same name, Terre Haute is the story of one very memorable year in the life of Jared McCaverty, who has just discovered sex but has yet to discover what it means. Spoiled by his family’s wealth, Jared is able to live in a world of fantasy—filled with movies, art, and daydreams. But when his thoughts of other boys begin to turn into reality with an older man, Jared comes to realize the implications—the very real perils—of his sexuality.' I found the above on a Belgium website selling copies of this novel and I thought it a much better description then the one on GR.
I hate to dwell on the reviews on GR but they are incredibly disappointing and maybe some of that has to do with the emphasis later editions placed on Jarred's affair with the closeted gay married man. If you read the review from Publishers Weekly when it first came out :
'Set in the Indiana city of its title in the early 1960s, this debut novel attempts to explore the implications of the narrator's burgeoning homosexuality. Fourteen-year-old Jared McCaverty both profits and suffers from precocity; he sees the emptiness of the world of his privileged, materialistic parents, yet craves their approval...'
gives a different and I think more accurate assessment of what the novel is about, because it is very much about being 14, facing the problems and challenges of 'growing-up' and in an undidactic way puts the reader right back into the early 1960s in the mid-west of the USA (though it could be provincial anywhere) and makes you live the reality of discovering and coming to terms with being gay when there was absolutely no help or support available and who you were was an affront to the people you love most. I found the scenes between Jared and his father some of the most moving I have read. It is sad to think that when this novel was first published in 1989 there were only hints that things were changing. That they did change is wonderful, but that in 2025 so many people want to go back to those bad old days is not simply sad, but tragic.
I do believe this is a fine and very underappreciated novel.
April 24, 2009
I finished this right before running out the door to work this morning. I was sort of so-so on it, but I think in the ensuing hours, it's sort of grown on me to the point where I miss it and wish I hadn't read it so fast. The ending was sort of... huh? And it was kind of the usual, 'follow someone around and experience all of their teenage apathy and angst and issues' schtick, but still... I liked it. Particularly memorable was the relationship with his father... it sort of creeped me out. Anyway.
June 27, 2020
Given the synopsis on the back of the book focused entirely on sex with a married man, I (realistically, I would think) assumed that's what the book would be about. I am not a fan of the infidelity literature, but I wanted to know how a writer would handle a gay relationship where one of the characters was underage and the book was not a smut/romance. But said relationship does not occur until about 7/8 of the way through the book. I kept turning pages waiting for it happen, to even be eluded to, then wondering if I got an oops copy where the cover doesn't match the inside. 75-80% of the novel had nothing to do with the relationship the back cover touts, but instead a rich kid obsessed with art and struggling with his sexuality in a town and family that does not, and never will accept him.
Now, other than the fact that I've been trying to find books where a character's sexuality is not related to the plot and they are surrounded by more supportive people, this book was not "bad". But it's definitely more literary fiction in genre than I usually go, so it's not my type of book. Had the back cover delved more into what actually happens in the book, or more about Jared's character and experiences, maybe I would have liked it more because I would have known what I was actually picking up. I don't want to say I feel deceived, but in a way I feel like the back cover was used for the exact purpose of luring readers into reading a book they otherwise would never pick up. (Which, again, is not to say the book is bad, just that it seems to be trying to attract a type of reader that would not actually enjoy this type of book.)
I myself felt no rising action or forward action. Scenes jumped between moments and days and months and characters, and Jared reported most things in such an off-handed, distant way, that I never had the chance to empathize with him or feel like things were happening to him, even when they literally were. There is violence in this book, there is sex, and there is depression and suicide. It's a heavy book, or should be, and yet it all felt so muted and, in a way, sterile. It was clean and cut short and direct, and thus entirely without feeling. I guess I would have gotten more meaning out of it if I understood or knew about any of the art they reference throughout the book, maybe.
There were certain moments where I wanted to know what happened, where a scene was ended and then time passed and that moment was never returned to. Things that should have been expanded on weren't, while pages were filled with dialogue that was equivalent to 'hey how are you' 'I'm good how about you', not conveying any information at all or conveying it in such an obvious way that it really shouldn't have been dialogue. I can't describe my reading of it in any way other than a slog. Yes I finished it in 3 days, but only because I made myself sit down and get through it to get it done, constantly waiting for the material I thought I would be getting.
And the part about the relationship is so brief and ends with so little emotion on Jared's part that I don't really feel it was even important. It happens, it ends, life continues; despite Jared's feelings (which were not based on any reality and did not feel real, since 99% of the relationship was not conveyed on the page) he seems to feel rather neutral about it all after, leaving me feeling like 'so what?' Why should I care, why did I just read this, what am I supposed to get out of it? I don't know is my answer to all of those questions.
Now, other than the fact that I've been trying to find books where a character's sexuality is not related to the plot and they are surrounded by more supportive people, this book was not "bad". But it's definitely more literary fiction in genre than I usually go, so it's not my type of book. Had the back cover delved more into what actually happens in the book, or more about Jared's character and experiences, maybe I would have liked it more because I would have known what I was actually picking up. I don't want to say I feel deceived, but in a way I feel like the back cover was used for the exact purpose of luring readers into reading a book they otherwise would never pick up. (Which, again, is not to say the book is bad, just that it seems to be trying to attract a type of reader that would not actually enjoy this type of book.)
I myself felt no rising action or forward action. Scenes jumped between moments and days and months and characters, and Jared reported most things in such an off-handed, distant way, that I never had the chance to empathize with him or feel like things were happening to him, even when they literally were. There is violence in this book, there is sex, and there is depression and suicide. It's a heavy book, or should be, and yet it all felt so muted and, in a way, sterile. It was clean and cut short and direct, and thus entirely without feeling. I guess I would have gotten more meaning out of it if I understood or knew about any of the art they reference throughout the book, maybe.
There were certain moments where I wanted to know what happened, where a scene was ended and then time passed and that moment was never returned to. Things that should have been expanded on weren't, while pages were filled with dialogue that was equivalent to 'hey how are you' 'I'm good how about you', not conveying any information at all or conveying it in such an obvious way that it really shouldn't have been dialogue. I can't describe my reading of it in any way other than a slog. Yes I finished it in 3 days, but only because I made myself sit down and get through it to get it done, constantly waiting for the material I thought I would be getting.
And the part about the relationship is so brief and ends with so little emotion on Jared's part that I don't really feel it was even important. It happens, it ends, life continues; despite Jared's feelings (which were not based on any reality and did not feel real, since 99% of the relationship was not conveyed on the page) he seems to feel rather neutral about it all after, leaving me feeling like 'so what?' Why should I care, why did I just read this, what am I supposed to get out of it? I don't know is my answer to all of those questions.
July 12, 2025
2 stars might be bordering on the harsh side considering that it wasn't badly written. There was quite a variety of characters and some interesting things going on plotwise, things to cause room for thought or discussion - if you have anyone to think about it and discuss it with. Probably it would be banned from schools because of the sex scenes, but if it was permitted it might make a good book for class reading. But for me it has nothing to make me want to read it again. It's perhaps too American for my tastes - it's not my world, not one which appeals to me.
I'm going through a phase where I'm wondering where all the great gay writers are. Where are the writers who can be ranked up there with Austen or Dickens? Obvious great writers are always in a minority anyway, and so out of a minority group of people the greats are going to be even harder to come by. But sometimes it feels like the greatest gay writers were at work in the days when homosexual feelings had to be suppressed, when homosexuals had to live in hiding. Perhaps all their pent up feelings got channelled into their writings and made their books the better for it (I think primarily of Forrest Reid). Since people have been more free to write what they like, without fear of censorship or repercussions, it has perhaps stemmed the creativity in many respects. Less thought has to be given to the precise words used, less thought has to go into the art and craft of writing. People are able to express their love and sexual feelings in real life so there isn't the same need to write as a creative outlet for those unexpressed and inexpressible thoughts. The long and the short of it is that I'm reading modern-day novels and I'm just not really finding anything that strikes me as beautiful or gripping or powerful. Maybe it's all too real where I prefer something more idyllic. I need to find beauty somewhere, something that draws me into that world and makes me want to be in it for the duration, and this book failed to do that. It did in parts - whenever Jared was with Randy. But Randy came and went, and after that I found nothing else to make me want to be there.
I'm going through a phase where I'm wondering where all the great gay writers are. Where are the writers who can be ranked up there with Austen or Dickens? Obvious great writers are always in a minority anyway, and so out of a minority group of people the greats are going to be even harder to come by. But sometimes it feels like the greatest gay writers were at work in the days when homosexual feelings had to be suppressed, when homosexuals had to live in hiding. Perhaps all their pent up feelings got channelled into their writings and made their books the better for it (I think primarily of Forrest Reid). Since people have been more free to write what they like, without fear of censorship or repercussions, it has perhaps stemmed the creativity in many respects. Less thought has to be given to the precise words used, less thought has to go into the art and craft of writing. People are able to express their love and sexual feelings in real life so there isn't the same need to write as a creative outlet for those unexpressed and inexpressible thoughts. The long and the short of it is that I'm reading modern-day novels and I'm just not really finding anything that strikes me as beautiful or gripping or powerful. Maybe it's all too real where I prefer something more idyllic. I need to find beauty somewhere, something that draws me into that world and makes me want to be in it for the duration, and this book failed to do that. It did in parts - whenever Jared was with Randy. But Randy came and went, and after that I found nothing else to make me want to be there.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews