The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

The Otto Digmore Decision
By Brent Hartinger
Published by BK Books, 2020
Five stars

“We all finally have the treasure we so desperately wanted, and it isn’t the gold in our saddlebags.”

The end of one series, which is linked to previous series, and will be followed by yet another series – that’s something to make a reader like me happy.

I fell in love with Russel Middlebrook way back at the beginning with “The Geography Club,” which I bought in 2010, the year I got my first Kindle for my 55th birthday. Then I embraced Otto Digmore when he appeared in “The Order of the Poison Oak.” My entrée into LGBT books (or, I guess, my second, digital entrée, since I’d read lots of gay lit in the 1970s and 80s) was through YA novels, and specifically through Brent Hartinger’s books. Hartinger’s unique backlist, allowing us to watch Russel and his friends grow up (as my own children have grown up) is a group of stories I treasure.

This isn’t the end of Otto Digmore, but the end of his series, and a kind of culmination of Hartinger’s look at young gay men coping with and living in Hollywood. Like all the books in this series, there is a mixture of humor, tender emotion, and philosophical consideration. The characters think, and thus they make you think (this is a good technique for YA books, but oddly enough, it works on adult readers too). Otto is a great guy – but a human guy, with flaws and selfishness and insecurity – just we all are.

This book is an adventure, a caper-within-a-caper, a Hollywood story about a movie being made. Just from that perspective it’s instructional and fascinating. However, it’s also about young people breaking into the exclusive club that pretends it’s not a club; a club that is stacked against women and LGBT folk and anyone who’s not male and white. It has been this way for a century now, and in spite of visible changes, it hasn’t changed enough. Hartinger takes us there, through the eyes of Otto Digmore, and leaves us emotionally satisfied, but also a little drained.

I hate Hollywood. As an aging gay man who’s seen the world change in unexpected ways, I am ever conscious that Hollywood is not quite as bad as it used to be, but is still much worse that it ought to be. I feel for Otto Digmore and Russel Middleboork, because they are my children, historically, and they’re still struggling with the things I struggled with and fought against thirty years ago. Sitting in my home under quarantine, with the current global and national political realities, I can’t help but feel disappointed. Wonderfully, and horribly, all of my old-man angst is reflected in the bright, beautiful hearts of Otto and Russel. They make me sad, and they give me hope at the same time.

I am ready for the journey to continue. More than ever, Brent Hartinger is an author whose presence in the world matters.