Boy Toy

Brilliant.

Let's suppose somebody abused you sexually. You still had a choice, though not a good one, about what to tell yourself about the abuse. -Albert EllisTrying to find the correct words sometimes to describe your thoughts can be very exhausting.I say this because, reading Lyga' Boy Toy was in a way a very disorientating experience for me. Having finished this book yesterday I found myself at a loss of words to write a review and hence I procrastinated.And while I had by today formed a rough sketch of what I would write in my head I couldn't decide where to begin. At times like this I do the only thing I can. I resort to Google. I search things through this enormous search monster all the time for different matters and needs, sometimes I use it to help me find some words.But not all problems can be solved so easily as is the case in Josh' situation here.The book told from Josh' POV alternates between his past and his present.Josh, a brilliant boy gifted with eidetic memory, is the son of two people who are the complete opposites of each other. And that is not a good thing in his case.His mother, a practical woman believes to live her life with facts and concrete truths, while his father who works in an ad agency as Josh himself puts it - sells one lie at a time to the world. He lives his life in fantasy, in creativity. While facts & fiction do sometimes attract each other, they do not make the most pleasant bedfellows.And so the year Josh turns 12, his parents find themselves in a predicament, that has them fighting more than usual. Knowing that in a couple of years Josh will be headed for college, they will need to start making the financial arrangements needed sooner than later. While they aren't in any dire financial condition, they make just about a hand to mouth existence.Josh' dad believes his son can finish college by earning a scholarship, since he is a valuable player on his school' baseball team and is a brilliant student. His mom believes in having a contingency plan wherein she believes should Josh for any reason not be entitled for a scholarship or fails to get one they should be prepared as much as they can to help their son gain the education he deserves, particularly since Josh is interested in heading to Stanford which is quite expensive.Now while the faith his father has in Josh is commendable. his mom does raise a valid point in the argument and so pursues a job to help with the education fund. Something which his father absolutely detests.Being the only child does not help him much either, so Josh finds his refuge in the friendship of his best friend Zik, a boy who has troubles of his own at his home. They are friends with Rachel and Michelle.It is on Rachel' birthday that a horrific moment leads to the exposure of the secret Josh has carried around.It comes out in the open that Josh, for the past 4 months has had a sexual relationship with his history teacher Evelyn Sherman, who he calls Eve.Under the pretence of having Josh help her with research for a project, Eve sought the permission of his parents allowing Josh to spend time at her home each day after school for a couple of hours. While in the beginning there is a pretence that there is a truth to this excuse, Eve uses the time to befriend Josh and win over his trust and in thus manipulating the situation, she seduces Josh.As Josh pleads the fifth, during the trial where Eve finally accepts she is guilty, you are baffled. You don't realize why Josh does so even after being explained by the judge that pleading the fifth is the right of a witness who does not wish to speak anything fearing prosecution and not of an abuse victim who has taken the stand to give testimony.At 18 now, Josh has behavioural problems and is understandably still under therapy. His almost as peaceful as possible life is once again thrown off kilter when he learns that his former teacher who was sentenced for abusing him is gonna be out on parole.Josh has been so deftly manipulated that he comes to believe that the actions of his past have been of his own doing. That the sexual relationship he happened to have at age 12, with a woman twice his age was his own choice, his own wish. That the undoing of Eve' life is his fault. He finds himself guilty that she lost her job, ended up in jail and cheated on her husband, thus jeopardising her marriage because of him.After 5 years of battling the demons of his past, how Josh finally manages to overcome his issues is the story of Toy Boy. How in finally realising that he was the victim here and not the culprit, Josh finally sets himself free from the guilt he had been unduly carrying around, helps him move on in his life.Tackling the issue of rape itself is not an easy thing when writing a book whether a memoir or fiction, so kudos to Lyga for not only managing to write about child molestation but has also making the book about male rape, a subject which is seldom raised.Josh finds himself as the culprit and not the victim in the situation not only owing to the manipulation but because he cannot bring himself to accept the position of one. He cannot recognise the truth that has been staring him in the face for years now.In finally accepting the one thing that he never wanted to consider Josh let's go of his demons and stops having the episodes he calls flickers as he says it to himselfI was molested. When I was twelve. And everyone else in the world knew it except for me.What Lyga has managed is to make this book which could have ended up as a perverted piece of fiction, to come across as the horrific, disturbing, gritty work which explores the state of mind of a victim, who even after years is still dealing with the aftermath of the ordeal he underwent and suffers from a guilt for having had the experience but for totally the wrong reasons. A victim of sexual abuse who suffers from a sort of Stockholm Syndrome who heals after 5 years.

I give this book 5 stars for the excellent writing and unexpectedly respectful way Barry Lyga handles the sexual molestation scenario. I wondered whether this book would be triggering, but through skillful writing technique, it skirts the sexual crime just enough to yield a comfortable read. I couldn't follow the baseball stuff. But that's just me. It rounds out Josh's and Rachel's characters, and links all 4 of the youths. Besides, baseball's just plain normal.

Review:I used to work for a local newspaper, and one of my tasks was typing up the weekly police blotter. Most of the contents of the blotter were your run-of-the-mill car accidents, petty theft, or disorderly conduct, but every now and then a report of child molestation would come across my desk. The reports were sickening, and each time I typed up the details of the incident I would ask myself a) how someone could be twisted enough to engage in a sexual relationship with a child and b) how that relationship had come about in the first place.Barry Lyga explores the answers to those questions, and more, in Boy Toy. The story centers on Josh Mendel, a senior in high school who, five years earlier, was involved in a full-blown affair with his seventh-grade history teacher. The book goes back and forth between the present and the past, taking you through the life of the affair from beginning to end and showing the impact it has on Josh’s life five years after the fact.The amazing thing about Boy Toy is that even though it’s about a very heavy subject, it’s still compelling. I honestly could not stop reading it – I switched from my small purse to my jumbo diaper bag of a purse just so I could carry Boy Toy with me everywhere I went. I wanted to hear Josh’s story. I wanted to understand. How on earth did a 12-year-old boy end up having sex with his teacher? What did the teacher see in him? How was their relationship discovered? What were the implications for Josh later, as a teenager?What’s brilliant about Lyga’s writing is that he makes you look at things in ways you’d never expect. For one thing, I never would have anticipated that I would sympathize with Eve, the woman who molested Josh. This isn’t to say I think what she does is right – there’s no doubt that it is twisted and wrong and incredibly screwed up. Rather, what I’m trying to say is that Eve is more than just your cardboard villain. She seems like a real person, with complicated motivations and clear strengths as well as clear weaknesses. She seems to truly care about Josh in her own messed up way, taking him on dates, cooking for him, cheering him on at his baseball games, etc. Where it all goes wrong is in the progression of their relationship from platonic to physical.Lyga has caught some flack for the intensity of the sex scenes in Boy Toy. Some readers argue that the scenes are gratuitous and inappropriate, focusing on feelings of excitement and eroticism rather than trauma or violation. I disagree with those readers wholeheartedly; I think the fact that the sex scenes are so hot and heavy is part of what makes the book successful.Before you start calling me a sick creep, let me explain. I do find it disturbing and twisted that Josh’s teacher seduced him, but I can’t deny that if the scenes were written between two consenting adults rather than a teacher and underage student, they’d be incredibly arousing. Reading the details of Josh’s sexual encounters triggered warring emotions of disgust, excitement, and shame, which is exactly what Josh feels when he thinks back to his experiences with his teacher. It put me in Josh’s shoes and helped me realize just how confused and conflicted he must have felt.Lyga’s ability to make his readers see things from the point of view of his characters is one of his many gifts as a writer. It’s scary how easy it is to understand why Eve falls for Josh. He’s different from the other kids at his school, mature for his age, precocious, thoughtful. Even at 12 he is almost as tall as Eve herself. He’s capable of holding meaningful conversations with her, of understanding her humor and making her laugh in return.Josh at 18, the age he is when recounting the events of the book, is no less amazing. He’s insanely smart, with a nearly photographic memory and the ability to calculate the square root of 52 or the product of 12 and 144 in his head. He’s enthralled by the stars and planets. He dedicates himself to working hard at all that he does, whether in the classroom or on the baseball diamond, where he’s a star hitter.It’s incredibly fascinating to watch Josh try to come to terms with what happened to him all those years ago, to witness him trying to deal with the guilt and the embarrassment of knowing that everyone in his town knows all the details of his sex life. He’s got a great voice, with a compelling blend of attitude and self-consciousness. I developed a bit of a book crush on him, and he’ll go down in my mind as one of my all-time favorite characters.Barry Lyga is an author who never disappoints me. He always presents a unique perspective, troubled but enthralling characters, and a plot that keeps you interested from start to finish. I strongly encourage you to go out and read Boy Toy. I know I’ll be revisiting it over and over again.This review can also be found on my blog, http://AngelasLibrary.com.

This story opens with a list. `Ten Things I Learned at the Age of Twelve'. It's a quirky little list that could have been created by any twelve-year-old boy. Until you get to the last item on the list. #10 is both shocking and disturbing. #10 brings the reader immediately into the heart of this earth-shattering story.After the list, Boy Toy opens on the remembrance of the narrator Josh Mendel's 13th birthday party. Josh has already lived through sexual abuse at the hands of one of his female teachers, Mrs. Sherman. What the reader is given to understand is that everybody else knows what has happened to Josh, but that Josh himself is not very clear on the subject. What goes wildly wrong in the first chapter is the result of Josh's lack of understanding. When he finds himself in the basement closet of his friend, Rachel, Josh really has no idea what is appropriate and what is inappropriate where thirteen-year-old relationships are concerned. Mrs. Sherman took all understanding away from Josh the day she started sexually abusing him.This is a story of a boy coming back from sexual abuse. It is an achingly beautiful read and it is a story well told. Looking into this boy's story gives readers an understanding of the difficulties faced by victims of molestation. Lyga does an excellent job showing the skewed understanding and mixed emotions Josh deals with as a result of his abuse. As Josh narrates the story, he is actually eighteen. He's getting ready to finish high school and he carries a huge burden. He feels guilty for destroying his teacher's life...for wrecking her marriage, for causing her to lose her teacher's career and end up in jail. What he doesn't realize is that none of it is his fault. His feeling are a direct result of the huge trauma he underwent while the abuse was happening.When Josh's teacher is released from prison, he feels her presence everywhere. He's just waiting to come face to face with her. His fear and guilt is palpable...but so is the sense that he wants to see her. It is around the same time that Rachel, his friend from the 13th birthday party fiasco, comes back for another round. Rachel wants Josh. I'm not sure if this relationship is what Lyga intended...it's rather sketchy to me. Rachel, in my opinion, is abrasive and pushy. Quite frankly, I could see her actions actually re-traumatizing Josh, if nothing else. This was the part of the story that stood out as iffy to me...and my reason for reluctantly giving it four stars instead of five.Josh's relationship with his best friend, Zik, was extremely well played. Zik was constantly there for Josh...but the whole time there was a wall between them. We shall not talk of this became such a huge barrier that it became something else for Josh to feel guilty about. The way the relationship was played out was deeply satisfying.I readily admit to being totally conflicted by this story. If not for the way Rachel was portrayed, it would have been a 5-star read for me. I just don't understand the motivation behind having Rachel being so forceful with Josh. Maybe it was intentional, I don't know. I can't pretend to understand the author's reasonings.I do know that should you choose to read Boy Toy, you'll love it. It's well written and it's a skilful look into a topic that is often taboo. I applaud Lyga for tackling it...and for doing it justice. I do highly recommend Boy Toy--Rachel objections aside.Expectation: Lyga did an amazing job representing Josh's conflicted feelings for Eve (Mrs. Sherman). Josh's emotional rollercoaster was so well played, as were his struggle with right and wrong and the confusion he experienced regarding guilt and blame/aggressor and victim. This book far exceeded my expectations. A great read!

I don't usually read YA, but there was an article in our local paper about a woman demanding this book be removed from the public library because of the subject matter, sex, swear words, etc. You know the type. So, I downloaded a sample to see what her issue was. Then I purchased it because I got so caught up in the story. It is beautifully told about a horrible trauma on a young man, told from HIS point of view. I didn't read any "detailed sex scenes" because there weren't any. Important storytelling about a sensitive subject and beautifully told. Kudos to the author! STOP. THE. CENSORSHIP. If you don't want to read it, or YOUR children reading it, don't. But don't tell other's what they can or can't read!

I was hooked from the beginning. I immediately connected with Josh and his best friend, Zik. Lynga captures two boys verging on manhood in today's world perfectly. Boyish yet worldly. Sexual yet inexperienced. Picking their way through moral values yet confused.There were scenes between the boys that made me nostalgic for those years with my two sons.I admit that Josh's seduction by Mrs. Sherman, his history teacher, was difficult for me to read. First, being a teacher, I was keenly aware of what a huge transgression the breaking of that taboo was. Then I ached for Josh. I didn't like reading about what he'd experienced, the despoiling of his youth. However, and this is why I appreciated this book, Lyga saves the day by allowing Josh to heal and come to terms with what happened when he was too young for the experience.I'd recommend the book to teens 16 and up. It's well-written, well-paced, and it tackles a difficult subject with a keen understanding of the complexity of human sexual behavior.