“If there is a more gloriously tender account of growing up gay in suburban Missouri, we have yet to see it. In 13 linked essays, Van Meter traces a loose chronology of a boy who spent the first half of his life learning to hide in the closet, and the second, struggling to come out of it.”

“As ordinary as this book might seem to be, ordinary is the last thing it is.”

A lovely, thoughtful review from James Cihlar at the Star Tribune. Don’t forget, I’ll be reading at Magers & Quinn (Minneapolis, MN) this Thursday (June 23) at 7:30.

“Perhaps Van Meter doesn’t himself know the answer to the question. Or perhaps his answer is his new book, If You Knew Then What I Know Now, an essay collection that could almost double as a memoir. It’s also as compelling as a great novel, and as ethereally beautiful as a poem that you read and still remember years later. Which is all to say that I haven’t read many books like it—not just because, as the sum of its parts, it’s difficult to pigeonhole into one genre, but because it’s flawless. Van Meter is a young writer, and this is his first book, but he’s already mastered a literary form that takes most other writers decades and decades to get right.”

Publishers Weekly had a few very kind words about the If You Knew Then What I Know Now book trailer:

“It was made by filmmaker Tucker Capps with Van Meter doing the voice over, and it’s just a lovely example of how a text can interact with film to create something that’s not merely a commercial for the book, but a piece of art in itself.  Wish more book trailers were like this, instead of cheesy attempts at movie previews.”