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BRIAN MALLOY: Kevin came to me with his voice fully formed. I knew immediately who he was. And he was the easiest character to write of any of the characters in The Year of Ice. And I think he's an archetype of the high school senior male who prefers keggers and rock and roll to reading a good book. He's very caught up in how he's perceived by other people and very concerned about his pecking order in high school.

SPEAKER: So he's going through a lot of challenges, too.

BRIAN MALLOY: He is going through a lot of challenges in his life. Kevin has a secret that he keeps very buried, and that is that he's attracted to boys. And he doesn't really even have the language to describe it. Well, he never refers to himself as gay once in the entire novel.

And this for him is a real challenge because it's so at odds with how he wants to be perceived in the world of high school. And he's very sensitive about how he is perceived by his peers. In one of the passages in the book, he notes that his high school is like Berlin of that era, that it's divided by a wall. Except in his high school, there's more walls and they're better guarded. So keeping his secret is his number one priority, even at the cost of his relationship with his father.

SPEAKER: He goes into detail about his sexual urges. And I'm wondering if you were worried at all about writing that, how readers might react to that.

BRIAN MALLOY: I've had an interesting range of reactions from readers, and it falls on two ends of a continuum. On one end are gay men who read it and think it's pretty tame stuff and presented for the heterosexual reader. And on the other end are largely heterosexual women who find the passages a bit challenging to them because Kevin is not harmless.

He is an 18-year-old male. His hormones are 18-year-old male hormones. And the fact that his sexual orientation is not heterosexual, it doesn't mean that he is this asexual character in the book. So I think some readers have had a little bit of a challenge in reading, and understanding and coming to terms, if you will, with Kevin's sexuality.

SPEAKER: Was it easy for you to write those passages, or did you feel like there was some sort of editor sitting on your shoulder saying, don't write about this?

BRIAN MALLOY: I did some self-censorship initially. And at first, I was very aware of trying to make this book for a general audience. And then as I got to know Kevin better and as I got to know the characters better, it really is a story. It's told as it happened to them. And I stopped thinking about audience at that point and really tried to be as true to the characters' voice as I could.

And I think, how will it play in the deep South? It'll probably cause some controversy there. In Minnesota, the reaction has been very supportive of telling Kevin's story. And in fact, I think people find it pretty tame up here.

SPEAKER: Kevin is struggling with his sexual identity and the death of his mother. But it appears throughout the entire book, he's really struggling with some isolation issues and he's very, very lonely. Can you talk about that?

BRIAN MALLOY: He's very lonely. In one sense, he has very good friends from high school. But in another sense, he's incredibly isolated because his friends are friends to him in the sense that they have a perception of who they believe he is. And he is not that person.

And when he really is honest about who he is, about the core of his being, that's when he feels his most lonely. And as you go through the book, you'll probably pick up that Kevin keeps track of who he suspects is like him, who he thinks might be a guy into guys. That's the language he uses. And it starts with a teacher. And then it gradually adds up to maybe four or five suspects and really virtually no confirmations that any of these people are like him. But I've heard from a lot of gay men that, that rite of passage is keeping track of who they suspect might be like them so they don't feel so alone.

SPEAKER: Kevin's father, Pat, does not really come off as a sympathetic character in the book. And I'm not going to ruin the book by saying what Pat does at the end, but can you talk about Pat.

BRIAN MALLOY: I like Pat. Pat is a father. Pat is raising a son on his own, a challenging son, for the most part, nonverbal son. But then as a father, Patrick's pretty nonverbal himself. I really wanted to write from a somewhat stereotypical male point of view that men are not known for really sitting down and having heart-to-heart conversations with each other.

And I like Patrick because even though he screws up over and over again, it really is with an absence of malice. He works at the Highland Park Ford Plant. He doesn't like his job.

He's been there years and years and he's very concerned that his youth is gone, his opportunities are gone, and this really is it for him. And to some degree, it's a midlife crisis. But in another way, he really is Peter Pan. He doesn't know who he wants to be when he grows up. But the clock is still ticking while he's trying to make up his mind and it creates a lot of conflict for him.

SPEAKER: The book is set in 1978. What kind of research did you do for this book? I noticed that in one passage, you were talking about Kevin watching Battle of the Network Stars.

[LAUGHS]

BRIAN MALLOY: Yeah.

SPEAKER: And it was the same day that the Jonestown Massacre occurred. Did you do that research?

BRIAN MALLOY: I wish I still had this address. But when I was doing some research on the web, I came across a site that was posted by a woman about my age, probably a few years younger. And it was all her diary entries for the year of 1978, including what she watched on TV that night. And it was a lot of fun.

She talked about what concerts she went to, what music was popular, what was on TV. There's a scene in the book where Kevin avoids going out cruising for girls at bars because he says the Flintstones Christmas is on and Rudolph's Shiny New Year is on. And that was all in this woman's diary. She kept track of what she watched on television.

SPEAKER: So it's a little treasure trove for you.

BRIAN MALLOY: It was a little treasure trove. And some of it's remembered, but I've learned not to trust memory completely.

SPEAKER: What do you hope people take with them after reading The Year of Ice.

BRIAN MALLOY: I think that the book itself is really not so much about Kevin's sexual orientation or the fact that the father really can't find his way in life. I think it's more about the secrets that we carry around with us, like wallets. And not all secrets are bad.

There are some secrets that are just embarrassing. I want to be a rock star like Bruce Springsteen, or I want to act on stage or there's the secrets we carry around because we're ashamed of them, things we're not proud of, low moments in our lives. And then there's the secret crushes that you just die if somebody found out about. So I think if people read the book, I would hope they walk away with maybe re-examining what it is that they keep private in their own lives, and if it's necessary, and if there is some richness that can come from shedding some of the secrets that perhaps might be holding us back from where we want to be in life.