But How Are You, Really (2024) by Ella Dawson is a novel about a five-year college reunion. It is more than simply a story about reconnecting with old friends; it is an opportunity for the main character, Charlotte Thorne, to remember who she was and who she could be and to reorient her life.
Self-described “bisexual dirtbag” Charlotte, “Charlie” Thorne, is a character that the reader meets in stages. Dawson tries to convey the gradual process of learning who a person is, who they were by piecing together this sense of self that encompasses strengths, insecurities, traumas, as well as her inner and public dialogues. It’s an impressive feat for a first-time novelist.
For many other characters, attending a reunion is an initial feeling of giddiness, of getting to see people again and reconnecting, but Charlotte is there for work. Her boss gives the commencement address at the end of the weekend and regularly reminds Charlotte that he’ll be soon deciding on a job in the art department that she wants.
For her, this means having to ignore conversations as she answers texts and phone calls and skipping meals to deal with problems. But for those who knew her in college, it serves as a reminder of how much she’s changed. No longer vivacious and artistic, she’s tired and beaten down and has closed herself off to her friends, many of whom are seeing and talking to her for the first time in a long time. While twenty-somethings bemoaning their lives can be eye-rolling for older readers, the worries about work, money, and the uncertain future are familiar to all.
The book’s greatest strength, besides the character of Charlotte, is managing to convey what college meant for so many people – and so many queer people at that. It was more than just a chance to move out and get away from parents, but a space of possibilities where people could find themselves.
Of course, for many, including Charlotte, that sense of endless possibility stands in sharp contrast to their lives afterwards. A fact which is laid bare at the reunion. Even as memories of happier times flood back with every action and every step she takes around campus. While she didn’t want to return and see her more successful classmates and feel shamed by them, she’s also cut herself off from her friends, and she comes to see that some people have changed while others haven’t. That they aren’t how they’ve been presenting themselves.
People’s lives have turned out differently than planned. And though these are not the book’s most dramatic or emotionally wrenching moments, they are finely observed details, some poignant, some funny, but it’s through the accumulation of small moments like this that Charlotte’s decisions to take shape, something that otherwise might have seemed melodramatic, but feels natural and inevitable.
The book is a second-chance romance for Charlotte and Reece, her hockey player boyfriend from senior year, whom she ghosted. It’s a story about a burned-out twenty-something who finds her way forward while dealing with her past abuse and trauma. But it’s also a book that celebrates friendship and celebrates queerness. Her queerness is what caused her mother to reject her and is why Charlotte hasn’t seen her mother. She refused to attend Charlotte’s graduation, after which Charlotte cut off contact. We learn about her bisexuality:
[It] wasn’t a rebellious phase or a party trick, and it wasn’t an inconvenience or an embarrassment to the people who loved her. Queerness meant joy and community and endless potential to fall in lust and love and understanding. Even if Charlotte had lost sight of that in the last few years.
The book ends with a large question mark about the future. This is a leap of uncertainty into what will happen next. But where the novel opens with Charlotte and this claustrophobic sense of compartmentalizing herself and her life, the ending finds her excited by the uncertainty. Seeing the chaos and uncertainty as a blank canvas with endless opportunities. Once again, she is embracing the idea of becoming herself. Something made possible through community.