Dream Boy: A Novel (Paperback)

by Jim Grimsley (Author) "On Sunday in the new church, Preacher John Roberts tells about the disciple Jesus loved whose name was also John, how at the Last Supper..." (more)
Key Phrases: smoking patio, Poke's Road, Uncle Heben, Potter's Lake (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
With this heartbreaking story of first love, Grimsley, recipient of the 1995 Sue Kaufman Prize for his first novel, Winter Birds, has crafted another potential award winner. Here he works that novel's theme?a father's abuse of his son?into his sensitive depiction of a love affair between two high-school boys in the rural South. Nathan, a sophomore and the only child of an abusive, scripture-quoting, booze-guzzling father and a nearly invisible mother, becomes smitten with Roy, a senior who lives next door. Almost without realizing it (and with some reluctance on both sides), they begin an achingly tender romance. Ultimately, peer pressure leads to tragedy, and to a sort of metaphysical denouement that may strike some readers as over-the-top. But by that time, Grimsley's scenario has become so poignant and credible that the ending seems almost inevitable. He clearly understands the pain and confusion of budding love, and his present-tense narrative adds urgency and a touching immediacy to his tale. Without ever succumbing to cliche, Grimsley cuts with surgical precision to the heart of these characters' inchoate longings and barely repressed fears. Deceptively simple descriptive passages are hauntingly elegiac, and things left unsaid become as important as words expressed: these players' silences speak volumes. Romantic passion, violence and ultimate liberation coalesce in this singular display of literary craftsmanship.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal
For collections desirous of a "problem" coming-of-age story with a gay theme, this might be a good bet. Grimsley, a Pen/Hemingway finalist for Winter Birds (LJ 8/94), writes smoothly, his Southern settings are evocative, and the dysfunctional family (with an abusive, alcoholic, Bible-toting father) of young Nathan rings true, as does the violence that pervades Dream Boy. Psychologically, what draws Nathan to Roy, the older-boy-baseball-star-with-a-girlfriend, makes sense; but, sexual orientation aside, Roy's interest in Nathan makes much less sense?as if it's supposed to be magic or chemistry. Whatever it is, the treatment is too perfunctory. Similarly, settings can tend toward the formulaic (farm pond flanked by overgrown cemetery?check; deserted, picturesque, haunted plantation mansion?check), and the plot is too subservient to atmosphere and theme. Still, this interesting effort will undoubtedly collect some rave reviews and therefore deserves consideration.?Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Touchstone; 1st Scribner Paperback Fiction Ed edition (January 30, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684829924
• ISBN-13: 978-0684829920
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.3 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (161 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #43,198 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Clean, simple, plaintive, divine., July 26, 2004

By	Holly "junkstory" (Los Angeles, CA, United States) - See all my reviews

The last time a book affected me this much ... well ... suffice it to say that it's been a long time.

First things first. I wish I wrote it.

It's the only novel I've ever read that I'm truly, genuinely envious of.

The writing is sensual but succint, the words lyrical but moderate. I actually became breathless while reading.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, it's a love story between two boys, and neither the word 'gay' nor the phrase 'I love you' is ever used.

Sure, there's touching, kissing, sex, teenage awkwardness, guilt, fear, even discrimination. But nothing beyond narrative emotion + action speaks of the nature of it. No labels, clichés, or assumptions. It's just simple, perfect, and beautiful.

I want to cradle this book like a baby.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Seductive, compelling tale, July 2, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Birmingham, Alabama) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dream Boy: A Novel (Hardcover)

I read DREAM BOY a couple of years ago, shortly after its hardcover publication. I was on a business trip, and stayed up well into the night to finish what I still consider to be one of my favorite novels. Grimsley's use of the first-person is a particularly wicked turn of style: I was hooked on page one, immediately drawn into the lives of these two boys. Seductive may be a better descriptor, for DREAM BOY is nothing if not seductive. While most readers may identify with Nathan's pain and his unwavering affection for Roy, it is Roy's love for Nathan that most captivated me. Strong yet subtle, confused yet confident, his undeniable passion and desire for Nathan give the book its emotional core. An unsteady core, to be sure. But it is that unsteadiness that allows the reader to more fully appreciate Roy's love, and to more easily understand the novel's inevitable climax. Much has been written about DREAM BOY's ending, mostly comments on Grimsley's talented use of some very powerful, dream-like imagery. But I think the ending only serves to remind us that Grimsley's real genius in this tale is his careful manipulation of his readers--to the point that we are willing to believe...either that the dead can rise and angels exist, or that a tortured soul can survive and redemption exists. Either way, he is simply asking us to believe in the same hope that allowed Nathan and Roy's relationship to blossom in the first place. Tonight, I have just seen Eric Rosen's stage adaptation of DREAM BOY, at Atlanta's 7 Stages, where Mr. Grimsley is a playwright-in-residence. The performance was textually and visually precise...nearly as emotionally stunning as the book itself. James McKay's Nathan will quietly draw you in, and Christopher Graham's Roy will make you believe, just as Nathan does, that this love is real...that it is somehow worth the pain.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Touching, powerful, and wonderfully written, December 12, 1999

By	Yuval Yonay (Haifa, Israel) - See all my reviews

Jim Grinsley's book just came out in Hebrew. A friend who liked Winter Birds asked me to buy him this book as a present. Before I gave him the present I started to read the first chapter to see if I like it. I put the book down when I finished the last page. It is hard to say what is so enchanting in this book. It is not a sophisticated novel; it does not use literary "tricks" to create subtle meanings. And yet, there is something very powerful in the way it is told; a lyrical undertone that you feel as if you read a poetry; and a living characters that one can easily identify with, even if he or she lived in a very different culture and society.

When I finished the book I had tears in my eyes. I am not sure if it was tears of joys, due to the possibility of two persons to find each other and create a special tie between them -- the word love might not be enough to convey the depth of their relations -- and to help each other find his inner self; his salvation. Or were these ties of sorrow, because their love was doomed to be destroyed by evil forces of homophobic society and wicked men (significantly, men and not women).

Grimsley is also unique in his treatment of the wicked characters in the novel -- Nathan's father and Burke (due to the Hebrew translation, it's hard to know if this is how the name is spelled in English). Undoubtedly, he does not condone them. But nor does he simply castigate them either. In his unique lyric and parsimonious, almost childlike, prose, Grimsley makes them also victims of cruel and hopeless poverty and of homophobic society -- a society which does not let its men to provide for their children on one hand (as in Winter Birds) and to express their feelings when they fail to do it on the other hand. A society that condemns such revelation of tenderness and compassion to be a secret, as when Nathan and Roy establish their unusual relations. Some readers too easily condemn Nathan's mother too, for not stopping her abusive husband. I think that Grimsley would like us rather to understand why so many women find it impossible to act otherwise. In a strange way I think that Grimsley makes us sympathize will all characters, even with those we would like to hate.

And finally there are all those allusions to the New Testament; not something that a Jewish man like me knows much about it. But obviously, religion and faith are crucial in this novel, both as a symbol of hypocritical society -- which applauds good virtues but condones evil -- and as a source of real hope and salvation. These are the reasons that this seemingly simple book should turn into a classic, a book to be recommended and studied i schools and colleges.