Book Review: Boy Toy by Barry Lyga
Mar. 13th, 2013 02:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: Boy Toy
Author: Barry Lyga
Published: New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 410
Total Page Count: 131,357
Text Number: 384
Read Because: personal enjoyment, e-book borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: When he was twelve, Josh was sexually abused by his history teacher, Eve. Five years later, Eve is released from jail and Josh is at the end of high school, still trying to piece together his life. Boy Toy is unflinching and unsensationalized, a surprisingly robust and level-headed look at the personal effects of sexual abuse. It's utterly joyless as a result, but by no means a bad book. Josh's narrative is inseparable from his history: while not strictly an unreliable narrator, his point of view is deeply skewed by the effects of his trauma. The symptoms of his PTSD aren't always convincing, but his poisoned thought processes and sense of guilt often are. Watching Josh rewrite his history as he gains a better understanding of his true role in it is the book's triumph; unfortunately, it's immediately undercut by a conclusion which errs, with the best intentions, towards simplistic. The ending is meant to create a sense of hope, but it's so good and so complete that it destroys the nuance of Josh's history—and the beginning of his recovery.
Lyga has taken what could be a problem novel, stripped away the sensationalism, and rewritten it as a complete and careful story. At best it's a joyless, sensitive, compelling portrait of trauma. But the transparent, lackluster present day narrative (with problematically useless authority figures) and idealized conclusion taint the effective subtlety, and the writing is artless and suffused, however appropriately, with male gaze. A book need not be in any way enjoyable to be good, and Boy Toy often hits that mark—but just as often, it fails to. It's an admirable effort, and I'm ultimately glad to have read it, but I don't recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Barry Lyga
Published: New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007
Rating: 4 of 5
Page Count: 410
Total Page Count: 131,357
Text Number: 384
Read Because: personal enjoyment, e-book borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: When he was twelve, Josh was sexually abused by his history teacher, Eve. Five years later, Eve is released from jail and Josh is at the end of high school, still trying to piece together his life. Boy Toy is unflinching and unsensationalized, a surprisingly robust and level-headed look at the personal effects of sexual abuse. It's utterly joyless as a result, but by no means a bad book. Josh's narrative is inseparable from his history: while not strictly an unreliable narrator, his point of view is deeply skewed by the effects of his trauma. The symptoms of his PTSD aren't always convincing, but his poisoned thought processes and sense of guilt often are. Watching Josh rewrite his history as he gains a better understanding of his true role in it is the book's triumph; unfortunately, it's immediately undercut by a conclusion which errs, with the best intentions, towards simplistic. The ending is meant to create a sense of hope, but it's so good and so complete that it destroys the nuance of Josh's history—and the beginning of his recovery.
Lyga has taken what could be a problem novel, stripped away the sensationalism, and rewritten it as a complete and careful story. At best it's a joyless, sensitive, compelling portrait of trauma. But the transparent, lackluster present day narrative (with problematically useless authority figures) and idealized conclusion taint the effective subtlety, and the writing is artless and suffused, however appropriately, with male gaze. A book need not be in any way enjoyable to be good, and Boy Toy often hits that mark—but just as often, it fails to. It's an admirable effort, and I'm ultimately glad to have read it, but I don't recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
