Color of Trees

This first novel attempts to address two meaty issues with its scenario of a gay, black teenager from New York coming of age at a boarding school, but the issues of race and sexuality diverge at the beginning and rarely meet again. Once Peter Givens arrives at Briarwood in 1968 he doesn't think about his family's life in a housing project except when he's home for summer vacation, and then his prep school experience fades out of his mind. While the issue of race comes up once or twice at school--particularly when Givens has a falling-out with a black student leader--sexuality, or rather sex, is the main event. Givens finds himself involved with a coterie of gay students who spend hours toweling themselves dry in the bathroom, staring at each others' crotches and sometimes acting on their impulses, but who seem to worry very little about grades or extracurricular activities. Parker draws tenuous connections between the constant sexual undercurrent among the students (``Blow me'' is the snappy retort of choice) and their homophobic reactions to one another, as well as between the casual drug use at the school and the drug addiction of Givens's brother; both tensions, however, are undeveloped. (Dec.)