City of Boys
Stories
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
Set in New York City, middle America, the beaches of Florida and rural highways, suburban kitchens, and cross-country trains, the ten stories of City of Boys evoke a haunting landscape at once familiar and strange. A small-town girl flees her domineering mother and falls into an obsessive love affair with an older woman in New York City. A sixteen-year-old envies her cousin's sex appeal while avoiding the attentions of her middle-aged uncle. A brother tries to protect his sister by convincing her never to leave their apartment, but his control is threatened when he takes a new job. And there is more, in this stunning debut by a masterful new voice in American literature.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in Midwestern suburbs, New York City and Florida, this accomplished debut collection homes in on girls and women struggling to cope with disappointment and emotional abandonment. Like the preteens in ``The Cocktail Hour'' and ``Riding into Day,'' they may be the hapless daughters of alcoholics or the progeny of troubled marriages; they can't quite comprehend their creeping sense of doom. The adult protagonists are emotionally disconnected survivors of relationships gone sour; Terry, at the center of ``Minor Casualties,'' has a lawn littered with the carcasses of animals killed by the cat her ex-boyfriend left behind. In the title story, one of the most powerful entries, a Midwesterner finds refuge from her oppressive mother in the arms of an older woman, but knows the affair is ephemeral. As the woman's former (male) lover tells the girl: ``I was the one before you, and you're just the one before someone else.'' Nugent's oblique style reveals her characters' inner lives and renders them sympathetic without soliciting the reader's pity. At her best, writing from the points of view of young girls who long for love and acceptance, the author imbues her subjects' alienation with a rare depth of feeling.
