Boy

May 1, 2020
Eighteen-year-old Boy's life is a mess. His mother and her live-in boyfriend are serial abusers of drugs and alcohol, irresponsibly leaving Boy to look after his baby half-brother. His father is in prison, having caused an accident while driving drunk that resulted in three deaths, one of them being his own daughter, Charlie, Boy's older sister, whose ghost now haunts him. His grades have plummeted, leaving his carefully planned future of going to military school crumbling. And, what's this? He meets a homeless man who has the gift (or curse) of being able to stop time. Phew. Throughout this unsettling novel, Boy suffers the tortures of the damned, so many that the reader becomes numb to them while wondering if there will ever be redemption for the poor kid. The novel is inarguably well written, though, and the characters, complex (except for the cartoonlike adults); its success, however, will depend on readers' tolerance for unmitigated suffering (all of the above, plus the presence of a menacing bully).(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)