Tremendous Things

When Wilbur goes to school for the first time in 7th grade, he’s asked to write a letter to his future self in a time capsule. He’s heartbreakingly honest: he wants to cry less, get control over Jeremiah (his privates), grow taller and get a girlfriend. But to Wilbur’s dismay, his letter is found by a bully called Tyler and circulated on social media. For years afterward he’s ridiculed, and called Wank—his initials—instead of his name. 

At fourteen, Wilbur sees himself as a loser. He works at a sandwich shop, looks after his geriatric rescue dog, and his best friend is his 85-year-old next-door-neighbour Sal. 

Wilbur’s best friend Alex is too busy spending time with his boyfriend Fabrizio to hang out with Wilbur anymore, and even his place in playing triangle in the school band is poisoned by the presence of Tyler. It’s not until the French exchange students come to stay that Wilbur’s life changes. The student staying with Wilbur is the quirky and beautiful Charlie, and he immediately falls for her. But Tyler is into Charlie too, and at the party at the end of Charlie’s week in Toronto, she kisses Tyler rather than Wil. 

Devastated, Wil wants to give up on everything. But Alex, Fabrizio and Sal stage a Queer-eye-style intervention to get Wil the confidence he needs to go on the exchange to Paris, where he debuts his new vintage wardrobe, hard-won self-esteem, and fitness regime on the international stage. 

His friendship with Charlie deepenS, but it seems he might lose his chance to be with her. In a last-ditch effort to catch her attention, he confesses his feelings in a performance of an original song. Sadly, she says she thinks they will be better off as friends—a decision he ultimately ends up agreeing with. 

Once he returns home, he finds that Sal has passed away. But Wil has grown a lot as a person since the beginning of the book. He starts working at a dog grooming business and asks an awesome girl out for coffee, asserts himself so that Tyler stops bullying him, and grows closer to Fabrizio and Alex. He’s set out to do tremendous things, just like Sal told him. 

A heartwarming story filled with love, loss, and second hand embarrassment. Wil’s connection to EB White’s novel Charlotte’s Web is a recurring theme throughout the book, connecting both to his feelings for Charlie and his self-image—all he has ever wanted is for someone to tell him he is terrific, but what he really needed was to believe it when he called himself terrific. His ultimate goal of winning Charlotte’s heart proves to be far less important than growing as a person and building connections with the people around him. 

 coming-of-age, travel, romance, friendship, bullying, courage, self-esteem. LGBTQI

 1. Wil refers to his penis as Jeremiah. He has two mums. His nickname is Wank, which are the initials of his name. Tyler apparently refers to Alex’s boyfriend as “F*grizio” and refused to refer to Laura using female pronouns after she transitioned (p. 42). 2. Two adult side characters smoke a joint (p. 32). Charlie drinks wine at dinner with her mother (she is 15) (p. 232-6). 3. Language: dick x 4, bloody x 1. 4. Sal passes away off-page, but after an earlier heart attack when Wil resuscitates him (p. 188). Wil and Tyler fight (p. 225).