Boy Toy--Barry Lyga (book review)

I wasn't going to read Boy Toy. In fact, I suggested that Barry Lyga not send it to me at all, but wait and send it directly to the winner of the giveaway so as to save me a trip to the dreaded post office. And when it arrived in the mail, I still had no intention of reading it. Just, maybe the Prologue. You know, to see what it was about.

Or, just the first chapter. . . or, well, maybe two. Two chapters, tops.

You know how this ends, right? Like that Alka-Seltzer commercial from the seventies: I can't believe I ate the whole thing. Except, I didn't eat it. It was a signed copy, after all.

The basic gist: 18-year-old Josh hasn't seen his 7th grade teacher, Eve, since the trial that sent her to prison after she initiated a sexual relationship with him when he was 13. Now she's out of prison and Josh finds himself finally dealing with emotions and guilt that he'd been burying for five years.

We see the story through three filters: 13-year-old Josh's in the flashbacks, 18-year-old Josh's as he narrates the story, and the reader-filter that allows us to understand things in a way that neither version of Josh is able to see. This balance is crucial, because neither of Josh's perspectives are what an adult would call "true," and yet they are what makes the story believable.

I'm not explaining this very well. Let me find an example.

Here's a flashback to the early parts of Josh's relationship with his teacher, when she first started having him over to her apartment after school. She always had a glass of wine after school, and this was the first time he had accepted her offer to try a sip.

She looked serious all of a sudden. "But really, Josh--you can't tell your parents I let you do this, OK? I could get in a lot of trouble."

Over a little sip of wine? Puh-lease. But whatever--I wasn't going to tell my parents anyway. "Don't worry about it."

(Boy Toy, Barry Lyga, p. 150)

So we get the 13-year-old voice ("puh-lease"), the 18-year-old memory ("I wasn't going to tell my parents anyway") and we view this scene with knowledge that Josh hasn't internalized: that this woman was grooming him, the way sexual predators do, easing him into keeping secrets from his parents.

The bulk of the story isn't about what happened when Josh was 13, though, it's about what happens when he's 18, mentally preparing himself for college away from home and figuring out the kind of adult he wants to be. It also goes into fairly explicit sexual details, so, while the voice and the story will appeal to teens, I consider it to be an adult novel (knowing that teens are perfectly capable of reading and appreciating adult novels, including this one).

Would you like to have my signed copy of Boy Toy? Drawing will be June 30. (It was July 1, but I want to mail it out on the 2nd so I've decided to do the drawing on the 30th)

The Soundtrack: I nearly rejected Salt n Pepa's Boy Toy, because although it shares a title with the book, I can hardly bear to listen to it. But then I read this deleted scene on Barry's website, on which he says Josh has terrible taste in music. It seems fitting to choose a song I wouldn't listen to if I found it on Josh's Ipod.

Publication Info: 2007, Houghton Mifflin. Available in hardcover and paperback.

Barry's Blogger Book Bonus

Contest winner has been drawn via Random.org--congratulations, Robin_Titan!

Author Barry Lyga asked for help giving away signed copies of his young adult books, and being the altruistic supporter of all things literary that I am, I'm stepping up to the plate. Even though this could very well require me to perform a task which I generally greet with the same enthusiasm as spending a night wandering through a swamp full of hungry, malaria-infected mosquitoes. (Translation: if you're one of those people who occasionally sees me in real life, so that I could get the book to you without a trip to the dreaded post office, I'll give you one thousand entries! Okay, one hundred. Okay, one. Please enter, so I can give you that one entry. Consider it a favor to me.)

So, I have a brand new (oops, I just read the prologue) gently used signed paperback copy of Lyga's 2007 book Boy Toy, winner of that year's Cybil Award.

[Ed: see my review] Here's what School Library Journal had to say in their starred review:

"For the past five years, Joshua Mendel has struggled with the aftermath of being sexually abused by his seventh-grade history teacher. Now a high school senior, he still experiences 'flickers,' his name for vivid, mini-flashbacks of his times with Eve. He still refuses to associate with Rachel, his seventh-grade romantic interest whose insistence on a game of spin the bottle at a party led to the exposure of his abuse, a trial, and Eve's imprisonment. Rachel is eager to resume their long-abandoned tentative romance, Eve has been released from prison, and Josh wants nothing more than to win a baseball scholarship to a college far from his small town where he feels certain everyone knows about his past. Despite years of counseling, Josh is unable to move on until he reveals the complete details of his experiences with Eve to Rachel and to his friend, Zik, and finally learns to accept the truth about it. Short groups of chapters set in the present alternate with much lengthier segments entitled 'Flashbacks, Not Flickers,' in which Josh describes his relationship with Eve from the beginning to the emotionally wrenching trial. The well-paced plot begins slowly, describing Eve's initial approaches to Josh as she wins his confidence and loyalty, then speeds up as their more frequent contacts move into the realm of inappropriate teacher/student behavior. Lyga's skillful writing subtly reveals Eve's cleverly calculated abuse of Josh in a way that older teens will find fascinating, distressing, and worthy of their attention." --Ginny Gustin, Sonoma County Library System, Santa Rosa, CA

This book is recommended for ages 16 through 106.

To enter, post a comment including your email address and anything else you'd like to say about Barry Lyga, or young adult books, or the post office, or...? Winner will be announced on June 30, 2009. In accordance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, you must be 13 or over to enter.

Lyga is also having a book trailer contest to mark the launch of his upcoming book, Goth Girl Rising. It looks like a lot of fun, and everyone who enters will win something, so go check it out after you've entered here!