Boy Toy - Barry Lyga
- Ali Mark
- Dec 8, 2015
- 2 min read
When a boy in a small town is molested by his middle school history teacher, he's left with the challenge of coping with everyone knowing; coping with the abuse; and overcoming the pressure to be the "perfect" baseball player.
Goodreads readers ranked this book a 4.02 and I'd recommend it if you're into:
suspenseful story lines
some factual story lines
descriptive writing
sports themes (baseball)
When I started this book, I expected two things: abuse and recovery. But I later came to find that this passage would set the tone for the book (especially if I re-read it). The book is more or less about forgiveness, but learning who to forgive for what, when, and why.
"See, forgiveness doesn't happen all at once. It's not an event - it's a process. Forgiveness happens while you're asleep, when you're dreaming, while you're in line at the coffee shop, while you're showering, eating, farting, jerking off. It happens in the back of your mind, and then one day you realize that you don't hate the person anymore."
Pros: the author researched and educated himself on the legal process of sexual abuse involving a minor; he understand the process of forgiveness in all its forms when abuse it as the centerfold; the process of experiencing flashbacks is as true as a flashback can be without exaggerating the event in full, since most flashbacks aren't the entire event, but a portion of it; Barry understood when an offender is someone you know, and when they're not incarcerated (but you're not entirely sure where they are - either because they're not a registered sex offender, or because you simply don't know anymore), there's an irrational fear that no matter where you go, they are there, as well. And he wrote it in a way that Josh could both feel that, and illustrate it so the other characters were able to identify with his fears. The writing itself was detailed (as it was in his other book I Hunt Killers, 4 stars).
Cons: the details became tiresome when it came to baseball - statistics, understanding the sport when you don't actually enjoy the sport - as it accounted for 1/4 of the book, and everyone except for one of the secondary characters knew exactly what was happening, which left the reader (if not a baseball extraordinaire) confused or googling the terminology. The "flickers," as Josh calls them, were done somewhat poorly throughout the book - they were one-liners, sometimes a few one-liners crammed together, but it was never expressed why they were done that way - or why Josh experienced them that way. It was in poor taste that the offender's relationship progressed with her significant other in the way it did after the assault was opened since it's far less likely to occur in that manner.
For majority of this book, I sat with a lump in my throat that dropped into my stomach, giving me a sour taste in my mouth, while also making me feel for Josh's story (especially because of the double standard of boys being assaulted by their young, female teachers).
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