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Perfect for fans of Adam Silvera and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, this suspenseful queer YA romance from critically acclaimed author K. Ancrum reimagines the tale of Icarus as a star-crossed love story between a young art thief and the son of the man he's been stealing from—think Portrait of a Thief for YA readers.
Icarus Gallagher is a thief. He steals priceless art and replaces it with his father's impeccable forgeries. For years, one man—the wealthy Mr. Black—has been their target in revenge for his role in the death of Icarus's mother. To keep their secret, Icarus adheres to his own strict rules to keep people, and feelings, at bay: Don't let anyone close. Don't let anyone touch you. And, above all, don't get caught.
Until one night, he does. Not by Mr. Black but by his mysterious son, Helios, now living under house arrest in the Black mansion. Instead of turning Icarus in, Helios bargains for something even more dangerous—a friendship that breaks every single one of Icarus's rules.
As reluctance and distrust become closeness and something more, they uncover the gilded cage that has trapped both their families for years. One Icarus is determined to escape. But his father's thirst for revenge shows no sign of fading, and soon it may force Icarus to choose: the escape he's dreamed of, or the boy he's come to love. Reaching for both could be his greatest triumph—or it could be his downfall.
Excerpt
Icarus
wednesday
It was dark in this house.
The air was still and warm.
Cat burglars rarely wear shoes. Instead, they wear socks. Icarus's were old and wool and his father had hand sewn fine black leather to the bottoms for traction.
Icarus crept across the edge of the main hall, then slipped into a drawing room.
Mr. Black's house had many useless spaces, many alcoves filled with junk. It was a monstrosity of metal and wood. Icarus had been here thousands of times over the years and he never felt comfortable. It was not a home; it was as empty and lifeless as a dollhouse.
Above a desk—protected from light and dust by a thin sheet—was Warhol's Red Lenin.
Icarus scanned the area around the painting, searching for the glint of a camera lens. He checked every time, like each visit was the first. It wasn't good to get too comfortable. Icarus crossed the room quickly and began dismantling the installation. He placed small tacks and screws on the floor, turned the protective glass pane onto its inside face to avoid disturbing the dust on the front. Then, Icarus pulled the black, flat case he carried off his back and unpacked his father's work: Warhol's Red Lenin.
It wasn't an expensive print, but Mr. Black was familiar with his belongings. He knew the works in this home. But Icarus's father knew Mr. Black and that made all the difference.
Icarus framed the forgery and hung it on the wall. He packaged the original painting and slid it into his carrying case. He backed out of the room, stepping into his own impressions, brushing back against the grain to erase his footprints. Then, he pulled the door softly closed.
Icarus left the house, scurried over the fence, shoved his feet into his Chelsea boots, and walked quickly home
icarus filiformis
Icarus was his father's son.
They were of a height, they had the same wiry frame, the same limp black hair, the same big ears, the same deep-set brown eyes, the same unhappy mouth. Icarus thought his father was ugly, so he knew he must be ugly too.
They were both artists, though Icarus was slightly worse.
Both thieves, but Icarus was faster.
Both quiet, but Icarus knew how to talk to other people.
Both friendless, but Icarus knew how to make people like him.
They walked at the same pace, moved with the same grace, had the same size hands and similar handwriting.
They both kneeled in penance, chins to the sky, fisted rosary. His father liked to keep his eyes closed. Icarus needed to keep his eyes open to stay tethered to faith.
And wasn't that just the way?
Angus Gallagher shut tight like a sarcophagus. Icarus Gallagher, eyes open, mouth open, waiting
Bounty
Icarus and his father lived in a small apartment in a part of town that had been nice maybe forty years ago.
The inside of their home smelled strongly of wood, linseed, minerals, herbs, and canvas, so that's what Icarus smelled like too.
The lights were all dim specialized bulbs designed to reduce light damage to paint. There were landscapes and portraits, repeated theme. A woman in green, brushed over and over, smiling, laughing, lying among them, her face an open secret. The only room where the walls weren't dotted with paint or paintings was the kitchen. In that room, where the sun was brightest, there were ferns in every corner that could house one.
In a few years, when Icarus and his father didn't live there anymore, a little girl from the new family who moved in would tell her parents there was gold dust in the cracks of the wood, gold left over from years of gilding.
They wouldn't believe her.
It was an artist's house. A studio with beds. Crammed full to bursting
him
Icarus slipped in and closed the door.
He slid across his own floors and made his way to the cold storage room.
This room should have been Icarus's bedroom, but their art needed the space.
Icarus swung the tube off his back and prepared Red Lenin for storage. Delicately stretching the canvas out to a frame its size, slipping it into a protective sheath, labeling it in fine print, and ...
Excerpted from Icarus by K. Ancrum. Copyright © 2024 by K. Ancrum. Excerpted by permission of HarperTeen. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
The titular protagonist of K. Ancrum's young adult novel Icarus lives a double life that mixes the mundane and inexplicable. By day, he is like any other high school senior, managing his classes, navigating student cliques, and preparing for the frightening and exhilarating independence lurking just beyond graduation. By night, his life dips into the bizarre and even outlandish — Icarus is a thief at the behest of his art restorationist father, Angus, breaking into nearby Mr. Black's mansion to replace genuine artwork with Angus's forgeries. Neither Angus nor Icarus are motivated by money in these robberies; Angus is more than successful with his restorations, not infrequently commissioned by world-famous museums. The novel reveals in painstaking bits and pieces the vengeful hatred undergirding Angus's criminal activities, into which he has dragged Icarus.
Because of the long hours and dangerous illegality of his work, Icarus keeps others at arm's length. He is strategic in forming acquaintanceships that end with each class period and do not extend after school hours. While others his age spend time with friends in the evening, Icarus falls into a surreal, almost unbelievable underworld. But his isolation ends when, during one of his routine break-ins, navigating the expensive-art-laden, gothic dimensions of the mansion, he is caught by Mr. Black's entrapped son, Helios, who only asks for company and friendship. An unlikely intimacy forms between these two young adults as they find warmth with each other away from their broken family backgrounds — a sense of belonging that naturally progresses into star-crossed romance.
Icarus is an ode to intimacy. Physicality is charged with emotional intensity even when Helios first catches Icarus red-handed. Ancrum's writing is unafraid to get up close and personal — as Helios "caught [Icarus's] arm quick and pushed him bodily up against the bookshelf," Icarus realizes that he "had never had someone this close pressed along every inch of him, and it was more than he could take. His eyes rolled back as the heat of a palm squeezed his forearm. Strong thighs bracketed his, preventing his escape. Icarus's knees felt like they were about to fail him." Acknowledged here and throughout the book is the complexity and often contradictory duality of this intimacy. Latent violence as well as heated pleasure accompany fears of exposure, vulnerability, and retribution — "Icarus was unmoored: naked and shaking in the circle of his own light," and yet, he has accessed long withheld warmth that beckons with the faint promise of openness and connectivity.
The dire effects of touch starvation and emotional neglect are also excavated in Icarus's thematic interrogation of fatherhood. Icarus dwells on how, other than their complicity in art forgery and theft from Mr. Black's mansion, he and Angus live separate lives, coming and going as they please with minimal notice to each other, while Icarus assumes sole responsibility for household chores. Their relationship is often business-like or transactional — at one point, Icarus buys a bottle of wine off Angus, never considering that Angus could offer it to him, father to son, as a freely given gift. Icarus likens his relationship with his father to one between a master and apprentice, a teacher expressing responsibility for a pupil without the warmth and compassion of parental care.
Small moments of tenderness do peek through — when Angus witnesses Icarus successfully removing a crayon stain from a Monet, he smiles and expresses pride. Yet, these exist alongside moments of brutal, paternalistic discipline. Routinely, Angus has Icarus pray on his knees and presents him with a false choice: he can either confess his sins or get hit with a switch, between which Icarus, of course, chooses confession. Thus, Icarus never romanticizes Angus's stoicism, showing the profound effects it has on his son's development into adulthood while still acknowledging an unbreakable bond between father and son, despite silence, frustration, loneliness, and anger.
Built on short sentences, lines, and paragraphs, Icarus is plainspoken but lyrical, delving into the main character's psyche from a third-person perspective. Each chapter generally lasts no more than four pages. This economy, rather than restricting the novel's exploration of interiority, bolsters it: in addition to illustrating Icarus's isolation as his double life pares down interpersonal communications and emotional connections, Ancrum's style saddles the simplest gestures and routines with meaning. Concluding one scene of forced religious confession are two short lines: "Angus took his hand back. When Icarus finally had the strength to pull his face up from the wood, he was alone." Their compactness invites a closer, more intimate and expanded interpretation of ostensibly straightforward sentences — Angus's retracted skinship, with Icarus ultimately left "alone" to fend for himself in the face of emotional vulnerability, becomes representative of the gaping disconnect that is the basis of their relationship throughout the story.
Indeed, the novel insists all its characters possess interiorities and hidden depths. Though its title implies the all-consuming importance of the titular protagonist and his motivations, desires, and coming of age, Ancrum's novel devotes ample space to the humanity of his daytime acquaintances. None of the characters fit neatly into high school stereotypes, despite Icarus's attempts to compartmentalize them with depthless labels: popular kid, jock, nerd, and loner. While Icarus is the main focus, the stories and fates of an entire surrounding cast – Celestina, Luca, Julian, Sorrel, and Aspen – are not peripheral. Numerous chapters are devoted to their family lives and personal quests, though not all of them are followed through with satisfying closure. In Ancrum's character-driven Icarus, flying too close to the warmth of the sun, to the unique light offered by each person, is not a matter of gross overreach but is, in fact, a necessity, a basic condition of humanity and interconnectedness, even at the risk of violent crash and burn.
Reviewed by Isabella Zhou
Aiden Thomas, Three-Time New York Times Bestselling Author of Cemetery Boys, The Sunbearer Trials, and Lost in the Never Woods
Olivia A. Cole, author of Dear Medusa
The titular protagonist of K. Ancrum's young adult novel Icarus denies that his name is an allusion to the famous character from Greek mythology and reveals that his mother christened him after the scientific name of a beloved fern, Icarus filiformis. Nonetheless, Icarus's denial of this reference only draws more attention to the resonance of his mythological namesake throughout the book.
In the original myth and Ancrum's retelling, Icarus's story is inseparable from his father's. Like the art restorationist Angus in Ancrum's book, Icarus's father in the myth, Daedalus, is an artist. According to Socrates in one Platonic dialogue, Daedalus's sculptures had to be tied down because they so captured the essence of life that they ultimately became alive themselves. Additionally, Daedalus is remembered as a genius inventor, with the ancient Greeks believing, for example, that he created the practice of carpentry. Therefore, like Angus toiling over art materials, frames, paintings, and sculptures in his studio, Daedalus is a master of handiwork and craft. However, his otherworldly inventiveness does not exclude him from the violent jealousies of human nature. Upon taking on the tutelage of his nephew, Talos, and realizing the boy's intelligence will eventually overshadow his own, Daedalus throws him off the Acropolis. Talos is miraculously transformed into a bird and saved, and Daedalus is banished from Athens, finding refuge in Crete under King Minos, where he becomes involved in the creation of the Minotaur, a creature that is half-man and half-bull.
Eventually, Minos imprisons Daedalus, who is determined to return to Athens with his son, in order to keep the inventor in Crete. But in both Ancrum's retelling and the mythology, the father-son pairs refuse to be confined by architecture. While Angus and Ancrum's Icarus are agile climbers who covertly gain criminal entrance through high-up windows, mythology's Daedalus observes the flight of birds and draws upon his ingenuity. With feathers, beeswax, and thread, he constructs wings for himself and Icarus. Before they take flight together to escape, Daedalus sternly warns Icarus not to fly too close to the sun. But Icarus does not heed his father's words and flies too high. The sun melts his wax wings, and he meets his demise falling into the sea. As Daedalus mourns over Icarus after burying him on the nearest island, Talos, the nephew he earlier attempted to murder, flies over to gloat. Unheeded words from a father also feature in Ancrum's Icarus, evolved into the uncommunicative silence between Angus and Icarus.
"Icarus" is not the only name in Ancrum's novel with mythological roots. Icarus's unlikely friend and love interest, Helios, is also a character from Greek myth — a Titan god personifying the sun. He drives a famed golden four-horse chariot. One day, Phaethon, one of Helios's sons (one of Apollo's sons, in some variations) begs his father to allow him to drive this sun chariot. Though reluctant, Helios acquiesces and hands Phaethon the reins. This has tragic consequences, as Phaethon's inexperience causes him to lose control of the horses. As the immortal steeds run wild, the earth is set on fire, and Zeus, to stop Phaethon, strikes him down with a thunderbolt into the River Eridanos. Thus, Helios, like Icarus, is associated with an ancient tale of father-son tragedy, which Ancrum retells through the fraught relationship between her Helios and his father, Mr. Black, running parallel to Icarus and Angus.
The myths involving Icarus and Daedalus, Helios and Phaethon are traditionally interpreted as cautionary tales to young, ambitious, and reckless men warning that they should not overreach and surpass their fathers; otherwise, they are fated to violent falls. Icarus, through reappropriating these classical figures, also plays with the notion of overreach – without moralizing condemnation, Ancrum's Icarus and Helios reach out to each other for intimacy and warmth against their antagonistic fathers' wishes, though the consequences of this reaching out, should it be discovered, remain dire, as in the Greek myths.
Daedalus Forming the Wings of Icarus out of Wax by Franz Xaver Wagenschön (18th century), courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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