All American Boy [Paperback]

William J. Mann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 2010

You can go back, but you can never go home...When actor Wally Day is called back to his hometown by his mother's mysterious plea for help, he returns to a past he has tried to forget. "Would you come home, Walter? Please?" With these desperate words from the distant mother he hasn't seen in ten years, Wally Day's carefully-constructed world collapses in on itself. For years, the handsome actor has made denial his own particular art form - from his stalled career to the emotionless embrace of the hard-edged boys who regularly traipse through his bedroom. Now, faced with this sudden intrusion from his past, Wally must confront the reasons he left his hometown of Brown's Mill in a cloud of anger, shame and guilt. As Wally unravels the dark side of his All-American family, he has a chance to make peace with the boy he was in order to become the man he needs to be. He is once more the 14-year-old living at Miss Aletha's house on the wrong side of town, the music of Saturday Night Fever providing the charged, erotic soundtrack to his life. The world was on the exuberant edge of change in those days, and Wally relives the thrill of discovery, the promise of forbidden sex - and the mistake that cost him everything. It's a journey that will take Wally back to his past - to a time when he was the good son, the smartest boy in the class, the shining picture of the All-American boy. William J. Mann has written his most powerful work yet: a searing novel about the difference between going home and finding yourself there. By turns poignant and sexy, harrowing and hopeful, "All American Boy" is filled with insight, humour, hurt, truth and the ever-renewing hope of love.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mann (Where the Boys Are) shifts gears from party-boy frivolity to the tragic consequences of buried family secrets in his most complex novel to date. Back home in pastoral Brown's Mill, struggling gay actor Wally Day reunites with his estranged mother, Regina, who's convinced she's losing her mind. For Wally, memories of home consist of his navy captain father's abuse; the kindness of his transsexual friend, Miss Aletha; schoolyard taunts; and a forbidden relationship with an older man, Zandy, that got Zandy jailed on child molestation charges when Wally was 15. As Wally seeks closure with his past, he becomes infatuated with Miss Aletha's latest teenage runaway, Donald, and frets over the instability of his elderly mother. She harbors memories of a horrible childhood and the shocking death of her sister, Rocky, and she's certain that she's recently murdered Wally's violent cousin, Kyle, and has forgotten where the corpse is. Amid clots of abysmal backstory, Wally comforts his mother and finally faces Zandy, who is now dying of AIDS. Fans expecting a bouncing circuit party might be traumatized by Mann's relentlessly bleak material, though some will be refreshed by his audacious change of pace. Agent, Malaga Baldi. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

William J. Mann is the critically acclaimed author of Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, Hollywood’s First Openly Gay Star, as well as The Biograph Girl and the novel The Men from the Boys. He is a contributor to Architectural Digest, The Boston Phoenix, and The Advocate.

Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Kensington (May 25, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0758203292
• ISBN-13: 978-0758203298
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,593,610 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I live in two of the most beautiful places on the planet ' Provincetown, Massachusetts, with its exquisite light and ever-shifting dunes in the summer and the fall, and Palm Springs, California, with its majestic mountains and invigorating desert air in the winter and the spring. I am indeed blessed.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A tough book to read, but worthwhile ..., May 9, 2005

By 

Bob Lind "camelwest" (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: All American Boy (Hardcover)

The back of the dust jacket on Mann's latest novel contain raves about his previous two novels, which dealt mostly with the stereotypical gay male cruising range of casual sex, bars, baths, drugs and circuit parties. Those expecting more of the same in "All American Boy" are in for a rude awakening.

"All American Boy" is a skillful tapestry of characterizations surrounding the lead character, Walter, his dysfunctional birth family, the family's own secrets, and regrets concerning the other adults in his life, including Miss Aletha (the transexual who raised him after he ran away from his parents' home), Zandy (the older man to whom he willingly gave his virginity in his early teens, but was later pressured to turn him in to the authorities, resulting in his being sent to prison) and boyhood acquaintances. He travels back to his small home town of Browns Mill, now an unemployed actor who is far from the "All American Boy" the town named him in his youth.

Much of the story is told in a kind of stream-of-consciousness manner that mimics the thought pattern of Walter's now senile mother, who still has daytime illusions of her dead husband and sister being alive, violent dellusions of killing those who have hurt her in the past, mixed with flashbacks from her own childhood (She had run away with her sister to sing in big city taverns) and of various stages of Walter's boyhood. It's not easy to follow, and more than a bit bleak and depressing, but realistically and emotionally tells the story of a boyhood lost and a life filled with regrets, which he doesn't know how to repair.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A dark and tragic departure for Mann, May 14, 2006

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DonMac "butchm" (Lynn, MA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: All American Boy (Paperback)

What a change of pace this novel is from his circuit part boys shennanigans. This is a much more complex, dark and heartbreaking tale of a family - mostly mother and son - coming to terms with their demons and their mistakes in life. The mother's story and background unfolds as the main character moves the the present trying to figure out what he wants and why he's returned home after a call from his mother. Mom's background unfolds as an aching and epically tragic life. The son - really, has not fallen far from that tree. Not a happy, carefree story, but a haunting and moving one. Actually, a welcome change from his last novel.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Dynamic character portrayals at the forefront of this novel, November 29, 2005

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Get What We Give (Georgia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: All American Boy (Hardcover)

Wm. Mann's All American Boy takes us on two journeys: that of Walter Day, a child well lauded by his town only to have that praise stripped away as a young teen. Walter comes back to his home town to assist his mother and to set to rest something that has been nagging at him - how he put a man in jail for something that Walter initiated.

The second journey is that of Walter's mother, a troubled old woman who may or may not be losing her mind.

As Mann weaves these two tales, we meet some really interesting and well developed characters. They are characters that, no doubt, many will recognize from their own lives.

Walter's story is the driving force behind the book. His mother's is one in support of the secondary plot of the book.

While this novel has some very realistic characters and some very involved background data, after finishing the novel, I couldn't help wishing I'd had more. More what though?

Well, let me put it this way...All American Boy is a novel about a 30 something gay man and his 73 year old dotty mother. I doubt that many elder women are going to be the readers of this book...I could be wrong... but I don't think so. While Walter's mother's story has bearing on Walter's rearing, I really felt that it went on a bit too much. A bit of selective editing and rewrite could have more succinctly interwoven his mother's tale with Walter's.

Conversely, I would have liked to learn more about Walter's history. Mann teases us throughout with bits and pieces of material, all along introducing us to some really well developed characters. I found myself infusing my own life into that of the characters about whom I was reading. However, as I rapidly read the book, eagerly awaiting the outcome, the resolution to some of the mysteries evoked - I found myself more than a little disappointed.

I was able to divine the solution to the big "mystery" from the first mention. But what about the mystery of Walter's father? Why did he kill himself? It's not explained. Maybe that's because Walter and his mother never knew - but it would have been nice to be told at least that much. Just what WAS Luz doing in the city? Was she really trying to find work as a legitimate model? Who was she at the store with? Or was she with anyone?

Understandably, some of issues are meant to be a bit confusing as we come to learn that not only did Walter's mother spend time in a "funny farm", but so did Walter after his lover of 10 years died. But that doesn't mean that we can't glean something more than we do, that it can't a little less ambiguous for the reader.

Miss Aletha is an awesome character who really deserved more attention. I finished the book feeling that she knew more about Walter's life than Walter did and wishing that Mann had let her tell about it.

Dee is a great character. He is possibly the most fully developed character in the entire book. That is probably because Mann really feels at home with young men who are at the peak of their sexuality and they know how to use it to get what they want. Certainly in his previous books, Mann has demonstrated as much. Dee is a character I would love to meet in real life. He seems to be a really interesting boy.

Zandy - Walter's great love and his great despair - is sufficiently mysterious since the book is told from Walter's viewpoint and we learn just how little Walter ever really bothered to get to know Zandy.

Ultimately, this is the most fully developed book Mann has written. It is ambitious and detailed.

One of the most disturbing scenes in the book - and one that had me a bit non-plussed was the confrontation between Walter and Zandy. For the most part the book is reality based; in other words, it does not deal in imaginative wanderings. However, this particular scene (hopefully) does just that. I'm more than happy to make that kind of a leap in comprehension, but with no previous instances of that in the book, it was...really weird, and more than a bit gross - if it isn't flight of fancy. And if it is a flight of fancy, then what the heck really took place?

I do recommend it. It's not a fluff piece, but I wish it had even more meat to it.