Ace Book Review: "Let's Talk About Love" by Claire Kann

"My advice to you is be prepared to educate. It may feel unfair that the onus of responsibility will fall on you, but when most people think the A stands for Ally, you will have to speak louder, with bravery and dignity, to be heard. You will have to be willing to inform and educate. And you will have to know when it is time to remove yourself from situations and disconnect from those who either do not understand or are unwilling to. You have to do what is right for you."

When you take a quick dip in the not very deep pool of asexual literature, chances are the title you will see come up again and again is 2018’s “Let’s Talk About Love” by Claire Kann. For me, seeing this book mentioned on Tumblr was one of the first times I realized that Young Adult novels were cranking out stories with well-explored canon asexual characters (dear YA readers of today, I’m jealous). So naturally, when I decided I wanted to read and review ace books for this blog, it seemed only natural to start with this one.

“Let’s Talk About Love” follows the story of Alice, a biromantic asexual college student who we first see while in the throes of an unexpectedly heartbreaking split with her girlfriend Margot. The reason why the split happens? It boils down to Alice’s asexuality. It’s not that Alice won’t have sex with Margot – indeed, like a lot of asexuals, she has sex with Margot to keep her happy – but for Margot, the notion that Alice doesn’t enjoy the act of sex is a deal killer. Margot thinks that Alice doesn’t really love her because she doesn’t feel sexual attraction the way Margot does and, when Alice tries to come out to her as ace, the response reads like a who’s who of “crap asexuals hear” – starting with the time honored favorite of “have you been to the doctor?”, hitting “were you abused?”, and ending with Margot declaring that if Alice doesn’t desire her, then it isn’t really love. Because, in spite of Alice’s kindness, her desire to be held and kissed, and her genuine love of romance, Margot, like many people, believes that sex is the ultimate pinnacle around which all other elements of a relationship must be built.

Following this nightmare break-up, Alice swears she’s done with dating… and gets blindsided when she meets Takumi, who is, as Alice’s narration is quick to note, utterly gorgeous. Aesthetic is big in Alice’s eyes, so much so that she has implemented a personal system to gauge the people around her which she calls the Cutie Code. I love this concept and the way Alice relies on it as a tool to try and process how non-asexual people must see things; it’s adorable and useful and feels very authentically ace. The Cutie Code is a straightforward system that starts at green and goes to red, the highest level of cute. And when Alice meets Takumi, he breaks it wide open, by hitting what Alice dubs “Cutie Code Black: The Next Generation”. And now, ladies and gentlemen, we have the set up for a YA romance.

Now, I will admit that I’m not exactly up on my YA romance, so I can’t really compare it to other novels in the genre or tell you how Alice being asexual changes the YA formula. But I can tell you, as an ace person who does enjoy romance (when it’s not being shoved down my throat, mind you) that watching Alice navigate who she is while reconciling it with her desire for love is a fresh and welcome change. While the book goes through a lot of the same core romance tropes and moments you would expect, the fact that Alice is asexual and wonders if Takumi will accept that part of her fuels so much of the story. As such, the book goes beyond the mere “girl meets boy, boy turns out to be charming, sweet, funny, and so adorable it hurts” formula for which I am admittedly a bit of a shill. It plays in that sandbox and has a lot of fun doing it, but it becomes, at its core, an exploration of being an asexual person struggling in a world that feels like it actively doesn’t want you. Given that that is an experience I know all too well, I appreciated it being brought to light.

I won’t lie, it was a surreal experience in general to read a book that screams asexuality from the rooftops. I mean, I get emotional just seeing the Wikipedia page for asexuality, so to have an entire book use the term several times and have asexuality be the central focus of the plot was literally something I have never had the pleasure of experiencing before. As I described in last week’s blog post, I have become somewhat accustomed to the feeling of not having characters I’m allowed to identify with, even in passing, so this is uncharted territory for me. More than once I found myself asking if this was just a fictional safe world or if we have really arrived at a place where health teachers and therapists alike discuss asexuality with respect and understanding like they do in the book. If it’s the former, that’s totally fine, because asexual readers deserve that kind of safe world; if it’s the latter, then I’m going to weep tears of joy (and I’m only partially kidding about that).

The way “asexuality” as both a term and concept gets woven into the narrative feels very natural to me. I think part of that comes from that fact that the narrative actually uses the terms many of us on the asexual spectrum also use to talk about ourselves, including the term “asexual spectrum” itself! The story does not shy away from terms like “ace” nor does it ignore other aspec identities like grey-asexuality. It also doesn’t shy away from issues faced by the asexual community. For instance, the quote at the beginning of this post is said by Alice’s therapist and you can bet that I was super pumped to see a character bring up the common misconception that the “A” in LGBTQA stands for Ally, when in fact it stands for “Asexual” and serves as an example of how we are constantly erased even from queer spaces.

In general, moments like that are where the book’s strengths lie. Claire Kann does an excellent job of taking somewhat complex, difficult to understand concepts and laying them out in very accessible terms. For instance, it can be difficult for people not on the asexual spectrum to understand the way exploration of sexuality and romance intersect. From an outside perspective, these things often seem illogical; heck, even those of us on the asexual spectrum can feel confused when faced with these questions and experiences. But Kann does an amazing job of breaking down these complex emotional dilemmas in a way that makes perfect sense, even while allowing Alice to wrestle with them.

One of the biggest things Alice wrestles with is wondering if being attracted to Takumi means she isn’t asexual anymore and the confusion, shame, and desperate sorrow she feels over it is perfect. I mean, I feel for her, but it’s wonderful to see the book represent those feelings of doubt and confusion so many asexual people are forced to confront when trying to figure out their identity. It’s painful to read the doubt Alice feels, wondering if maybe she’s grey-asexual and if that will make her more balanced, but it shows the important process of self-discovery and presents this process in a way that isn’t invalidating like most media tends to be. Whereas most media hurts me because it ignores and degrades what I am, the pain in this book is a good, satisfying, familiar pain that represents growth.

Overall, my favorite thing about this book is the fact that it is unflinchingly asexual, even while it allows Alice to struggle with it. Alice is confident that this is who she truly is, but at the same time, the story acknowledges that you can know who you are and still struggle to talk about it with people. There are scenes in the book where Alice practices what it will be like to identify to people out loud and vows to herself that one day she will get there, but also doesn’t feel like she wants or owes it to everyone to come out before she’s ready. Wanting to be your true self but being afraid to be out in the open about what your true self means is a valid thing that many asexual people go through, myself included for many years, as do many people of various orientations. I’ve had conversations with friends about this very same thing, and while reading about Alice going through it is heartbreaking, it is a wonderfully important part of the experience of becoming who you want to be that I don’t often see portrayed in media.

The fact that Alice is generally a super romantic person on top of all this is also something I really like. If I had a dollar for every time a piece of media tried to equate asexuality to being a cold emotionless robot person, I would be blogging from the inside of Scrooge McDuck’s money bin, so the fact that Alice is allowed to be an asexual person who loves love is delightful to me. The fact that she is such a romantic person also serves as an excellent springboard to highlight the difficulties asexual people face when trying to navigate a world that is so often unsympathetic to them. At one point, Alice feels angry and resentful that the world expects her to be sexual in order to get the romance she craves, a scene that makes my heart hurt but which is also massively important. For Alice, love is not about physical intimacy, but emotional intimacy like sharing secrets and accepting each other and knowing the other person is there for you. To see a character of any kind talk about love as separate from sex and physicality is marvelous and from a romantic asexual character, it feels even better.

In general, even beyond the fact that she’s ace, Alice is a massively relatable, super fun character. She loves food, is struggling to figure out what to do with her future for most of the book, and loves geeky television shows and movies. I’m sure none of you are exactly surprised by the fact that the Asexual Geek enjoys reading about an asexual geek, especially when so many of the geeky things referenced in the book are among my faves. References abound to media such as Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The X-Files, and Disney, just to name a few; there is even a mention of my favorite TV-show-that-was-only-good-for-one-season, Fox’s Sleepy Hollow.

More importantly for this particular novel, her asexual journey has some extremely relatable points as well. For instance, so many of the passages in the book related to Alice first discovering her asexuality hit really close to home, but none more so than, “Everything had finally made sense. And had given Alice a whole new set of challenges.” I don’t think I’ve ever heard a quote more accurately sum up my asexual experience and let me tell you, that’s rare for me. After so long spent never seeing my experiences portrayed, having a quote like this is an almost shocking acknowledgement of what it’s like to be ace that I really appreciate. Moments like this are part of the many things that make Alice shine as a main character and make her someone you’re immediately rooting for. As an asexual reader, there is a whole other added layer of relatability, especially when the book tells us the many times Alice has had to alter herself in order to navigate the perilous waters of young adulthood.

SPOILER WARNING!

“This was where she had begun to perfect the art of playing along,” says the book of the first time Alice, in middle school, pretends to have a crush so she’ll fit in with everyone else. Two sentences later comes the equally gut-wrenching quote “Normal felt like a constant state of despair, but they had stopped teasing her, had stopped […] calling her ‘innocent,’” describing how she feels when dating a boy who turns out to be horrible, and the first person with whom she has sex for the sake of the relationship. Unlike Alice, I am aromantic and sex-repulsed, so I’ve neither dated nor had sex, but I don’t need to have those experiences to feel utterly gutted by these quotes because I too know what it’s like to play along. Most of my life has been spent nodding uncomfortably while people make sex jokes or discuss the physical aspects of their relationships. And the sad thing is that I’m one of the lucky ones, because I’ve never had to put myself in the positions Alice finds herself in throughout her relationships.

The book does not sugar-coat these things; it lets them hurt. It lets Alice go through the shame and hurt that these relationships bring into her life, and it doesn’t stop even when she finds someone she cares about more genuinely than she has with past romantic partners. When Alice eventually comes out to Takumi (in a great scene that feels genuine and natural), he accepts it even though he doesn’t entirely understand. However, when she later tries to ask him out, the attempt is less successful. Takumi’s inability to completely wrap his mind around Alice’s orientation leads to an incredible scene where Alice, who is practically in love with him by this point, makes the hard choice of putting the breaks on the relationship before it starts, finally making the first move to leave somebody rather than suffering through the type of relationship she doesn’t want. Again, although I feel for her, I love this fact. It would have been very easy from a plot standpoint to have Takumi accept her in a forced or trite manner and have everything be fine, but instead we are taken through what feels like a genuine journey with Alice as she suffers through the consequences. I’m proud of her and every ace person who has ever been through anything similar because asexual people deserve the types of relationships they want, not the types other people want from them.

Eventually, Takumi walks himself through the notion that Alice is still passionate about him, but that it’s emotional passion, not physical passion. This realization leads to them finally dating near the end of the book and during the epilogue, we see they are quite happy. There is one part in the end that strikes me as a little ambiguous, however. As part of a little celebration for their seven month anniversary, Alice and Takumi order food and enjoy a movie and the narrative says, “after they’d eaten dinner and finished their movie, and after they’d had their moment,” which leads to a scene where they affirm they each know the other loves them. Honestly, I’m not a hundred percent sure what this signifies in their relationship, but the fact that they affirm their love for each other is great. Whatever the mechanics of Alice and Takumi’s relationship, she is happy and so is he; after so long of looking for the type of romance so often denied to her, she’s achieved it, and that alone is beautiful.

END OF SPOILERS

Overall, there’s a lot to love about “Let’s Talk About Love” – the way it emphasizes consent for everything from hugs to kisses, the normalization of therapy, the way it highlights and appreciates the many different types and facets of love that exist, including friendships of all kinds. Those friends – both male and female – support Alice unconditionally and help her navigate the questions she asks herself about her identity, which becomes especially impressive because her best friend is pretty sexual, but nevertheless accepts Alice and encourages her when needed. I want to see more of that in media, more of people accepting and respecting the boundaries of their friends rather than endeavoring to change them so the act of understanding them becomes easier. I want to see media that calls out aphobia, and other forms of discrimination like biphobia/bisexual erasure in LGBT+ spaces or the subtle racism that often gets overlooked in day to day life. I want to see media that sheds light on the asexual experience and the struggles we go through.

Just a few short years ago, I would have been utterly shocked to find that asexual characters like Alice could exist in media and that their relatable struggles would be explored thoughtfully as the main plot of a story. But reading “Let’s Talk About Love” has gotten me excited by the notion of the further books that exist with ace characters and I am looking forward now more than ever to reading them. Perhaps one of these books – or another piece of media – will have a character whose experience is even more like my own aspec experience or perhaps one day soon media won’t need to explore the pain of the experience, only joy and acceptance. There’s still a long, long way to go when it comes to representing asexuality and other similar identities in media, but for now, I’ll take this as a good little glimmer of hope for what’s to come.