Review: Invisible Boys by Holden Sheppard

Gritty and raw, Invisible Boys is a grim reminder that not every YA LGBTQIA+ book can be like Heartstopper and leave the reader with warm fuzzies. This is a book that is literally for the titular Invisible Boys, the ones that are hidden due to the stigma that would follow them in the small and rough communities where they live. Charlie, Hammer and Zeke are three seemingly different boys living in a rough small town in Western Australia. Zeke is shy, intelligent and very sensitive, the near constant target of Hammer, the town's star footballer whose popularity rests on his sporting prowess and his near constant bullying of others which, as is often the case in hyper-masculine communities mistaken for manliness. But the two have more in common than they think--both are attracted to men and, possibly, each other. Meanwhile, an incident with a predatory married man has left musician Charlie not only outed before he is ready but wrongfully shouldering the blame. (Umm, who was the much older married adult in the situation?) Anyway, each boy has their own coming out, or choosing to stay in the closet story, ones that adolescents in their situation will find relatable.

I found this book to be uncomfortable in places, mostly because I was reading it from the perspective of a heterosexual adult who grew up in suburbia. In other words, this book was not written for me, and nor should it be. It's a coming of age and coming out book for adolescents. It addresses very important issues that arise surrounding secrecy and the characters looking online for advice--and more. There are accounts of predatory behaviour from adults that some readers may find disturbing. The novel is a challenging read overall, with dark themes of homophobia, predatory men and suicide and is best suited to mature teens.

And although the novel is written about boys and for boys, one thing I think is worth mentioning is that I found the lack of positive female characters concerning. (The only truly decent adult female character, schoolteacher Mrs Collard is written out early in the novel.) I'm not of the opinion that female characters should be abundant in books like this, but there does need to be some kind of balance, something that will challenge the perceptions of the target audience instead of offering an almost wholly negative account.

A gritty and raw account of coming out in a small town.

Recommended.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more