Narrated by Teddy Hamilton and Christian Fox
Vintage Review – audiobook released 2016, review from 2019
The premise of Sarina Bowen’s The Understatement of the Year bears more than a passing resemblance to HIM – one of her collaborations with Elle Kennedy – because it’s centred around ice-hockey, and the two leads – Michael Graham and John Rikker (voiced here by Christian Fox and Teddy Hamilton respectively) – are childhood friends whose friendship ends abruptly, for reasons one of them doesn’t understand. But unlike Wes and Jamie in HIM, Rikker and Graham had already acknowledged their mutual attraction and begun to explore the physical side of it before things crashed and burned between them, and their friendship ended for very different reasons, which ultimately forced one of them so far back into the closet, it’s a wonder he didn’t end up in Narnia.
Rikker and Graham have known each other since they were kids and were best buddies all through school. They spent a lot of their teenage years playing video games in Michael’s basement room until one day, a tussle turns into a kiss, turns into a make-out session – and from then on, their basement activities are split between video games and games of a different kind. They’re young, they’re happy, they’re more than half-way in love… but an ill-timed kiss sees them become the victims of a violent attack, one in which Rikker is badly injured while Graham escapes unscathed – physically at least – because he runs off, leaving Rikker to fend for himself. After the attack, Graham doesn’t call or visit Rikker in the hospital and cuts all contact with his friend, terrified people will find out he (Graham) is queer. When Rikker’s ultra conservative, Bible-thumping parents send him away to live with his grandmother in Vermont, it turns out to have been the best thing they could have done for him (although it wasn’t their intention!), as there, Rikker finds love and acceptance from his grandmother and his new friends, while Graham is heartbroken and weighed down by guilt over the fact that he abandoned his best friend and lover to violence because of his own cowardice and selfishness.
Five years later, Graham is in his sophomore year at Harkness College and is one of the stars of the college hockey team. He’s played it straight (pun intended) for all of that time, hiding his sexuality from everyone – including himself – hooking up with girls (provided he’s drunk, but not too drunk to be able to get it up), and allowing his fear of discovery to rule his life. So to say it’s a shock to see his first love walk into the Harkness team’s locker room and be introduced as their newest recruit really is the understatement of the year.
Rikker has never made a big thing of his sexual orientation; he doesn’t hide it, neither does he advertise it, wanting his talent on the ice to speak for him rather than to be some kind of poster boy for gay athletes. But when he was publicly outed, his former coach at Saint B.’s College threw him off the team for being gay, and when legal action was threatened because such behaviour contravened the rules, a transfer was arranged to Harkness, a very unusual event. Rikker knew he’d come face-to-face with Graham again, but not what to expect. The fact he’s obviously not pleased to see him comes as no surprise.
“If he’d wanted to remember that I existed, he might have called some time in the last five years.”
All Graham’s guilt over his actions that fateful night comes roaring back, along with the new and sickening fear that Rikker will let something slip about their past. But Rikker was outed against his will and is certainly not about to do that to Graham – and although Graham does eventually realise that, he nonetheless barely acknowledges Rikker and takes care to spend as little time in his company as possible.
It has to be said that Graham’s treatment of Rikker is pretty shitty. Rikker realises immediately that Graham is deeply closeted and his heart aches at the thought that his first – and only – love is tying himself up in knots denying such a fundamental truth about who he is as a person. He’s hurt, too, by the knowledge that Graham is afraid he will betray his secret, and still doesn’t know exactly why Graham abandoned him all those years ago. But in spite of this, Ms. Bowen manages to make Graham into a character that elicits the listener’s sympathy; he’s so screwed-up and is clearly suffering because of his choices, and his fears – homophobia is still rampant in professional sport – are understandable and well-articulated. Yet the attraction that sparked between the men in their teens is impossible to deny now they’re within each other’s orbits once more, and although Rikker knows trying to have a relationship of any kind with someone so deeply closeted is a recipe for disaster, he can’t resist Graham any more than Graham can continue to ignore him. Passion flares between them, and Graham at last discovers how it feels to be the person he’s meant to be when he feels the weight of his deception and worries lift every time he’s in Rikker’s arms.
The writing is really strong, and feels spot on in so many ways, whether in the crass, casual homophobia of team-mates and opponents alike, Rikker’s acute loneliness or Graham’s confusion and his fear of facing the truth about who he is. I thoroughly appreciated that while Rikker is the impetus for Graham’s gradual owning of the truth, he never pushes or tries to talk Graham into coming out. Instead, he understands and accepts Graham’s fears, providing the support and consideration his lover needs in order to do what he finally realises he needs to do for himself.
This is my first time listening to Christian Fox, and he and Teddy Hamilton make a fantastic team, both of them delivering fabulous performances that are technically accomplished and emotionally satisfying. Their voices are similar in register but differ sufficiently in timbre for there to be a clear demarcation between the leads, which negates the need for the character identification at the head of each chapter/section that is carried over from the print version. Mr. Fox does a great job with the tightly-wound Graham, injecting all that loneliness, despair and angst into his voice without ever going over the top, and Mr. Hamilton is equally good as Rikker, expertly conveying the character’s compassion, his self-awareness and his quiet inner strength. Both narrators are clearly invested in the story and characters, and I never felt, at any time, as though either of them had missed a cue or not quite got a handle on the emotional centre of any given moment or scene.
With great secondary characters, leads who act and speak like young men rather than whiny teens, a compelling, heart-breaking but ultimately uplifting story AND narration that is close to aural perfection, I blew through The Understatement of the Year in two or three sittings and it’s an audiobook I know I’ll be listening to again in the not too distant future. I’m pretty sure you’ll end up doing the same.
Caz
Buy The Understatement of the Year by Sarina Bowen on Amazon
