Dream Boy

by Jim Grimsley, Justin Torres (Foreword by)

Overview

Charting one boy’s search for companionship amidst violence and isolation in the mid-century rural South, with a new foreword from National Book Award-winner Justin Torres.

Nathan’s used to being alone. Drifting from town to town following his salesman father, he seeks solace in his studies when he can’t find understanding in his own home; his father is abusive and an alcoholic and his mother would rather disappear into the background than protect him.

Enter Roy. The older boy next door might have a girlfriend at school and at church, but there’s no question that they’re drawn to one another, and the two quickly become entangled in a covert relationship. As their relationship intensifies, Roy and Nathan must navigate their fears of being caught and their growing desires for one another. But when Nathan’s dad begins to suspect Nathan and Roy’s relationship is more than just friendship, Nathan’s home ceases to be safe, forcing Nathan to run away and altering his life, relationships, and future.

Through lyrical and evocative writing, Grimsley explores violence, tenderness, trauma, religion, and queer love against the backdrop of the 1950s rural South.

“Romantic passion, violence and ultimate liberation coalesce in this singular display of literary craftsmanship.” — Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646145508
Publisher:	Levine Querido
Publication date:	04/01/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208

About the Author

Jim Grimsley was born in rural eastern North Carolina and was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Jim’s first novel, Winter Birds, won the Sue Kaufman Prize for best first novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award. He has published other novels, including Dream Boy, Kirith Kirin, and My Drowning. His books are available in Hebrew, German, French, Spanish, Dutch, and Portuguese. He has also published a collection of plays and most recently a memoir, How I Shed My Skin. His body of work as a prose writer and playwright was awarded the Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2005. For twenty years he taught writing at Emory University in Atlanta.

Editorial Reviews

With this heartbreaking story of first love, Grimsley, recipient of the 1995 Sue Kaufman Prize for his first novel, Winter Birds, has crafted another potential award winner. Here he works that novel's theme-a father's abuse of his son-into his sensitive depiction of a love affair between two high-school boys in the rural South. Nathan, a sophomore and the only child of an abusive, scripture-quoting, booze-guzzling father and a nearly invisible mother, becomes smitten with Roy, a senior who lives next door. Almost without realizing it (and with some reluctance on both sides), they begin an achingly tender romance. Ultimately, peer pressure leads to tragedy, and to a sort of metaphysical denouement that may strike some readers as over-the-top. But by that time, Grimsley's scenario has become so poignant and credible that the ending seems almost inevitable. He clearly understands the pain and confusion of budding love, and his present-tense narrative adds urgency and a touching immediacy to his tale. Without ever succumbing to clich, Grimsley cuts with surgical precision to the heart of these characters' inchoate longings and barely repressed fears. Deceptively simple descriptive passages are hauntingly elegiac, and things left unsaid become as important as words expressed: these players' silences speak volumes. Romantic passion, violence and ultimate liberation coalesce in this singular display of literary craftsmanship. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

For collections desirous of a "problem" coming-of-age story with a gay theme, this might be a good bet. Grimsley, a Pen/Hemingway finalist for Winter Birds (LJ 8/94), writes smoothly, his Southern settings are evocative, and the dysfunctional family (with an abusive, alcoholic, Bible-toting father) of young Nathan rings true, as does the violence that pervades Dream Boy. Psychologically, what draws Nathan to Roy, the older-boy-baseball-star-with-a-girlfriend, makes sense; but, sexual orientation aside, Roy's interest in Nathan makes much less senseas if it's supposed to be magic or chemistry. Whatever it is, the treatment is too perfunctory. Similarly, settings can tend toward the formulaic (farm pond flanked by overgrown cemeterycheck; deserted, picturesque, haunted plantation mansioncheck), and the plot is too subservient to atmosphere and theme. Still, this interesting effort will undoubtedly collect some rave reviews and therefore deserves consideration.Robert E. Brown, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.

Library Journal

Nathan moves with mother and father to a farm. Roy lives next door with his mother and father. Slightly younger than Roy, Nathan is bookish and slight, whereas Roy is outgoing, popular, and a real farm boy. Nathan falls in love with Roy, and Roy falls in love with Nathan. They have sex. Meanwhile, Nathan's alcoholic father has sexually abused Nathan; Nathan's mother sighs about it all but seems helpless to do anything. Nathan starts sleeping in the woods and Roy's barn but eats at home when his father isn't there as his mother watches and says little. Nathan, Roy, and two of Roy's friends start swimming together, then go hiking to a place where there's an abandoned house, where malice in the interactions among them leads to Nathan's being raped. Wimsley tells this story as if it were a dream: the diction, pacing, and details all have a distant, almost fuzzy quality. This very unusual novel is a truly unique addition to gay literature.

Charles Harmon