REVIEW: Audre & Bash Are Just Friends by Tia Williams
Dear Tia Williams,
I’ve been meaning to read a Tia Williams book for some time now and was happy to get the chance to read Audre & Bash are Just Friends. It’s a YA contemporary set in Brooklyn over a summer. Audre is the daughter of Eva Mercy. (I didn’t know this until the author’s acknowledgements at the end of the book, but Eva and Shane (her partner) are the protagonists in Seven Days in June – the book which first put Tia Williams on my radar.) Four years have passed since the events of Seven Days in June. Shane and Eva are engaged and have a daughter “baby Alice” (to whom Audre refers as “the goblin”) and Audre is now 16 years old and busy planning her future.
Part of Audre’s plan is to get into Stanford and study psychology. She’s been providing “therapy” to her peers for money for some time. Audre plans to write a book about life advice for teens as part of her application to Stanford, believing that she needs something more than her excellent grades to stand out enough to be accepted.
Audre is feeling very displaced, particularly since the birth of baby Alice. Eva is caught up in Shane and the baby and Audre feels she is the a satellite and not really a part of the family. It doesn’t help that the apartment where they live needs to be renovated to create a space for both girls and the project has been delayed. So what was Audre’s bedroom is now a construction zone (and she will eventually get back only half of it) and Audre is sleeping on the couch in the living room. A 16-year-old girl needs her privacy!!
Audre has just graduated for the year and was Class President, giving the end of year speech. And her mother didn’t go.
Usually Audre spends summers in California with her dad but that plan is ruined when her dad announces that he and his new partner, Athena, are expecting a child and his partner’s mother is staying with them as Athena has terrible morning sickness. So there’s no room for Audre in “Dadifornia” this summer. She’s stuck in Brooklyn and the internship with a mental health clinic she was going to have is now also toast given it’s over there and she’s stuck in Brooklyn. Her whole plan is a bust and she’s feeling very resentful of all the adults in her life and their infant/unborn children.
Audre’s best friend, Reshma, plans to be in Argentina with her wealthy musician parents and that leaves Audre at loose ends. Reshma, much more adventurous and social than Audre, writes her a list of things to achieve over the summer to get some real life experience under her belt. It’s all well and good to offer therapy to people but it needs to be based on some kind of life experience right?? Audre enlists the aid of Bash Henry, a boy who goes to a neighbouring school, having transferred there from California under mysterious circumstances a few months before. Bash is a bit of a enigma. Everyone loves him; he throws the best parties, girls and guys alike swoon over him but he’s intensely private. He’s cool and friendly and after one conversation with him, more than one girl is convinced they’re soulmates. There are so many rumours about Bash – what is true and what is not. But, Bash does seem know know how to have fun – so she asks him to be her “funsultant” for the summer.
And so Bash and Audre become friends. Each finds the other very magnetic and attractive but for their own reasons neither thinks there could be anything between them. Until that changes.
Bash’s own history is revealed over the course of the book. He’s been very let down by the adults in his life and, until he moved to New York, he lived a strictly regimented life with zero colouring outside the lines allowed. His entire life changed in just seven minutes. Since then, he’s taken to timing what else can happen in that timeframe.
Seven minutes, he thought, grabbing his towel and wiping the sand off his skin. That’s all the time it took for Dad to get rid of me.
That’s where his mind went when he was still. Ever since Milton said that he was no longer his son, he’d been obsessed with timing things, with figuring out what could be done in seven minutes. He timed everything. He’d discovered that he could whip up an edible pan of chicken stir-fry in seven minutes. He could bike half of the Park Slope loop in seven minutes. He could tolerate four highball shots in seven minutes.
And, because there were a zillion clocks in Just Because, and he watched them obsessively—he knew that it had taken seven minutes to say yes to Audre.
When he came to the big apple, he decided things were going to be different. He was going to say “yes” to everything. He’s technically living with his mother but she’s rarely home. They barely know each other; she gave up custody of him when he was a baby and he was raised by his strict and demanding father. There’s a lot of resentment in Bash toward his mother over it. His mother is white and has generational wealth. She spends her time acting as a tone deaf white saviour for at-risk teens of colour, all the while having largely ignored her own son for his entire life. Bash sees the irony. She does not.
Audre inspires feelings in Bash he’s never felt before and for the first time, he considers hanging around in New York rather than leaving the first chance he gets. He will turn 18 in August and the plan at the start of summer was to move to another state near a beach (Bash loves to surf) and be an apprentice tattoo artist. But then there’s Audre…
Audre has a fraught relationship with her mother. Eva is incredibly strict about curfews and social activities (especially with boys) for reasons which Audre doesn’t understand. It’s another of the ways that Audre lacks life experience and over the summer, Audre and her mother come into conflict multiple times as Audre tries to spread her wings and Eva tries to hold her back, hold her away from risk.
I found Audre very relateable and sympathetic and I liked her very much but Bash stole my heart. As I’ve gotten older kindness has become a major source of attraction for me (in all the ways one can be attracted). I want to spend time with kind people. And Bash, above all, is kind.
…I don’t believe in being mean.” He shrugged and thought about this for a moment, fingering his thin, silver necklace. “Meanness is too easy. People think being mean makes them seem edgy or unique. Kindness is more radical.”
Bash is compassionate and generous and he pays attention. Audre has experienced a couple of panic attacks and hasn’t been able to talk to anyone about them, including her mother. After Bash witnesses Audre having a panic attack, he waits patiently, without judgement or pity but with genuine empathy and concern, and provides useful, practical help. When he hears that Audre’s mother didn’t hear her speech at the end of the school year, this is his response:
“…I really want to hear your speech. You need someone to be proud of you. I’ll be proud.”
Audre & Bash are Just Friends is also very funny. One of the challenges Reshma sets for Audre is buying a dildo and the scene was hilarious in the best way. Here is some of it:
“Do we have a dildo-buying strategy?” asked Audre. “You tell me,” said Bash. “I’ve never done this before.” “So, how are you helping, exactly?”
“I’m here as your enthusiastic cosigner.”
“This challenge is dumb. What am I supposed to learn from buying a dildo?”
“Okay, you gotta stop saying the word dildo.”
“Why?”
Why? thought Bash. Is she really asking me that? How do I even answer?…
“If we’re gonna do this,” she said, “you have to relax. ‘Dildo’ is just a word. Be mature.”
“I think you’re overestimating my maturity.”
“Bash, come on.”
“I’m kidding. I’m kidding.” He turned his Raiders cap to the back and neutralized his expression. “I’m ready. Let’s go. What’s the move?”
“I guess we just wing it. Go with God?”
My arc had a couple of errors in (it’s an arc so, fair) but I was curious whether the mythical item was a Smurf lunchbox or a Smurf phone. Perhaps someone who gets a finished copy can tell me?
Reshma has her own sort-of story arc and I liked the messy complicated friendship she had with Audre. It reminded me in many ways of my school BFF and myself.
The end of the book unraveled a little for me. The resolution felt rushed and a bit convenient. And I thought Bash’s backstory needed more attention than the story gave it. But overall, the book was very good; eminently readable, with a delightful teen romance. And you know what? Even though Bash and Audre are 18 and 16 respectively when the book ends, I think they could actually go the distance.
“I’ve noticed something,” said Bash, carefully. “You like pointing out the competitions you’ve won.”
Audre flinched, immediately embarrassed. “I . . . I guess I want to seem impressive.”
“But you’re impressive without winning. You’re impressive just standing there, trying to figure out why you’re in Target buying a sex toy with a guy you didn’t know two weeks ago.” Audre smiled bashfully, casting her eyes downward. “Thank you.”
Grade: B
Regards,
Kaetrin
