| Title: |
The Boys on the Rock |
 |
| Author: |
John Fox |
| Published by: |
St. Martin's Press, 1984 |
| ISBN: |
0-312-09419-1 [hardcover, 146 pages] |
The Boys on the Rock is a rare and wonderful novel
of adolescence, a gay Catcher in the Rye. Written with uncanny precision
and wild humor in the voice of its sixteen-year-old hero, this is the story
of Billy Connors, high school student in the Bronx, member of the swim
team, and all-around regular guy who in his sixteenth year has to face
the fact that he's a little different from everyone else, a little "weird."
Though he's sort of going steady with a girl and popular at school,
he's always worried that the secret fantasies he has about men would set
him apart and make him "different" if anyone knew about them.
All this changes when he meets twenty-year-old Al while working as a political
volunteer -- and realizes that he's fallen in love for the first time in
his life. How Billy faces up to himself -- and his friends -- as he discovers
the complexities of life, the exuberance of sex, and what it means to be
an adult in our imperfect world makes for a touching, wise, and very moving
novel.
