Tiny Cooper is not Tiny.  He’s big boned and has a big presence too.  Additionally, he is gay and figuring out how to love in this novel written as a script for a musical by David Leviathan.  Hats off to Leviathan for accomplishing such a feat of writing.  The word choices are so terse, yet so loud and powerful.  Tiny wants to experience the type of love he sees his unconditional parents exchange to freely.  He tries this through multiple boyfriends, each who have their own agendas.  When Tiny does find love, his last partner becomes the one who can’t trust the love Tiny so desperately wants to give.  Ultimately, Tiny shares the message he has had to learn over the course of the story — that you have to fall to learn to trust.  And if you hit bottom, you just have to get up again.

The stage directions Leviathan incorporates are more impressive than the dialogue between actors.  In fact, because of the repetition within music, a reader can fast forward their reading.  Written for a high school audience and above, there are plenty of witty lines which just highlight the truth in certain stereotypes of gay men.   Tiny is jazz hands gay, proud of it, and makes his presence known to all.  It will be interesting to see if this gets picked up in my library.