I’m Dirty, and so is “Boy Toy”

It’s hard to write critically about something you feel close to. It took me probably a total of six hours to finish Barry Lyga’s second and latest novel “Boy Toy,” (Houghton Mifflin, 2007) and now, less than an hour after I’ve finished it, I feel almost like I just finished the last “Harry Potter” book. That is to say, I’m feeling very “damn, I wish I could continue reading!!”

I first picked up “Boy Toy” because I enjoyed Barry Lyga’s first novel, “The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl,” (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) which was a novel about a comic geek who loved Bendis, and the goth girl who sort of understood him, but didn’t really, but really did—sort of. I liked it, but I didn’t like like it. It was a fun read though, especially for teen lit. I was expecting more of the same from “Boy Toy,” but the only things the two books had in common were the high school where each took place, and the idea of a real-world running theme (“Fanboy…” featured comic books, and “Boy Toy” featured baseball*).

(The following paragraph may contain spoilers. Maybe? I don’t know. Perhaps these plot points were well known to those who had sought out the book, but for me, each reveal was just that: a reveal).

Where “Fanboy…” was a fun teen book, here we have something much more. “Boy Toy” is the story of a Josh Mendel, an 18 year old math and baseball wiz who is less than patiently looking forward to the end of his senior year so that he can get the fuck (or, to more accurately express the tone of Josh and the book, get the fucking fuckety fuck!) out of his hometown. He has good reason to want to leave: when he was 12, he (if I may quote the book) fucked his history teacher, Mrs. Evelyn Sherman. A lot. In fact, he fell in love with her. Josh feels stigmatized, and like most teen lit, he has but one good friend with whom he can feel safe.

Yes, there are a lot of teen lit stereotypes here. There are at least two “you just don’t get it, do you”s in the book. But there are some not-so stereotype moments: like the sex scenes between the teacher and the 12-year-old boy. There are moments when Mrs. Sherman asks Josh “don’t you love me?” There’s the part where Josh, thinking making out will undoubtedly lead to fucking, rips the underwear off the 13 year old girl he is in the closet with at a party. There’s the trial, when Josh wouldn’t testify against Eve because she loved him and he loved her. There’s the scene where Eve’s husband George beats the shit out of a 13-year-old boy for fucking his wife.

The book paints a very clear picture for the reader, one that I admittedly wasn’t prepared to buy into. Naively, I read the book thinking that Josh lived the dream: he banged the hot teacher—and at just 12 years old! The sex scenes were merely evidence of this fact. Then my attitude started to change: Eve asked Josh if he loved her. Eve said she loved him. Eve had Josh lying to his parents. Eve would call Josh on weekend to say she missed him. Eve would have Josh watch porn and ask if he wanted her to be that satisfied. My mental image went from hot teacher in lingerie, to some sort of terrifying image—something clearly predatory.

The sign of a good book might be how well it’s written, how many obvious stereotypes it avoids, or how well it gets it point across. This book changed my way of thinking. This book literally made me sick. I became disgusted with teachers and parents and police and lawyers and myself**.

When I closed the book for the last time, I put it down. For lack of a better phrase, this book touched me in a way that made me uncomfortable. When I finished, all that mattered to me was Josh being ok. If the sign of a good book is caring about the characters, then there you have it.

This book might not be a great read; I don’t know if I think it’s one of the better written books I’ve read or not; I don’t even know that I liked it. But I’m glad I read it, and I wish it had existed so I could have read it earlier.


*I hate baseball. Remember?

**Partly because I cared about baseball while reading.