Customer Reviews

Dirty Little Altar Boy

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great book covering a time of change we have all been through. The author mixes humor with insight to take you through those troubled times between adolescents and the teen years. One will never know how he, his family and, friends ever survived these stories. Great fun!

When I finished the last page of this book, misty-eyed and smiling at the same time, I was ready to start over and read it again. Not only is it funny and smart, this book stays with you. It's a coming-of-age story that dodges the cliches, and it isn't afraid to get its hands dirty, just like the 13-year old protagonist himself. It touches on such a pivotal age, and through a series of short stories creates a large, vivid, and fulfilling novel. The characters are colorful and unflinchingly truthful, and the situations (from the hilariously surreal to the painfully too-real) are relatable and clever. The writer handles his subject matter with subtle brush strokes in some stories, or with the unbridled enthusiasm of a Rick Springfield concert when necessary. You can't help but connect with the protagonist, an outcast hero whose observations of his increasingly complicated world are written with a pitch-perfect voice that encompasses everything from innocence to cynicism, hope to disgust. This novel is funny, heartbreaking, moving, imaginative, and mischievous.

His view of life is a humorous analogue to the curious and poignant, the unconscious things we do and things we come to believe. Brandon has a brilliant ability to plumb the divine comedy like loose change from the earth tone sofa of our childhoods and brings those blurry memories hilariously into focus.

This is a great book. It is honestly one of the funniest, most heartfelt, demented and strangest novels I've ever read. Although I've finished it, I keep flipping through it and reading pages and chapters over and over. A great debut book from a talented new writer.

A real page turner, poignant, insightful and FUNNY. Laugh-out-loud yet, in way, touching. Anyone who's ever been perceived as the underdog - which is most of us - can relate to this collection.

I read this upon a recommendation from a friend (because four of my five brothers were Altar Boys) and I'm glad I did. I hope to see more from this author.

My only real complaint is I wish the book was longer. Which is exactly the opposite of the way I usually feel after putting down a book.

I stumbled across the author, Brandon D. Christopher, doing a book reading of 'Dirty Little Altar Boy' in Los Angeles, and I have never laughed so hard in my life. I had to buy this book. And I did buy this book, and it is just amazing! It's jarring, it's funny, it's a perfect look inside the mind of a weird 13-year-old kid dealing with everything we dealt with at that age, but he captures it all so perfectly and painfully and hysterically. I am really impressed with this author and his debut book, and I will be on the look-out for anything he does next. I highly recommend this book if you like David Sedaris' or Augusten Burroughs' memoirs--'Dirty Little Altar Boy' is just amazing!

When you hear the title, Dirty Little Altar Boy, what comes to mind is a tween or teenager that is a misfit and probably did some wild stuff when he was in middle school. What you get with Christopher's novel is a tired, worn-out plot about a 12-to-13-year-old malcontent who really doesn't do anything wrong. He attends parochial school, is an altar boy and is friends with two other rag tag, unpopular boys.

His friends steal the host chalice and wine from the priest, but that's been done before. The reader can't get close to Christopher, we catch glimpses when his father gets angry, once, but we don't get a full and complete picture of this boy, or why he'd consider himself a "dirty little altar boy." The book is a scattered glimpse into the life of Christopher, his love of Chuck Norris, finding girls attractive and generally doing what most young adolescent boys do.

The most deeply written story in the book is when Valentine boxes are on each child's desk and Christopher is left out, not getting one Valentine. It shows the brutality of other children, the pickiness and fickleness of girls and Christopher's heartbreak.

Armchair Interviews says: A decent read for a malcontent teenage boy, but otherwise a pass for the rest of us.