{"id":294,"date":"2013-02-19T14:01:42","date_gmt":"2013-02-19T18:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/~reviewing\/?page_id=294"},"modified":"2013-02-19T14:03:14","modified_gmt":"2013-02-19T18:03:14","slug":"the-boy-an-unexpected-love-story","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/students.com.miami.edu\/reviewing\/?page_id=294","title":{"rendered":"‘The Boy’ an unexpected love story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted Feb. 19, 2013<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Boy\u201d
\nBy Lara Santoro<\/p>\n

By MELISSA CASTILLO<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Boy\u201d <\/i>reflects a harsh reality of human nature: we are all eternally flawed. Richard, the neighbor, is a womanizer. Ree, the friend, is always high. Esparanza, the maid, has a gambling addiction. And Anna begs for stability between what she thinks she wants and what she was given. Their flaws are made that much more compelling due to their middle-aged status and children who seem to take a back seat to their personal battles.<\/p>\n

\"Santoro\"<\/a>Lara Santoro\u2019s classic anti-heroine, Anna, was a foreign correspondent with a wavering cocaine addiction in a past, unchained life. The novel picks up in Anna\u2019s present, which entails moving past a bitter divorce while raising an eight-year-old daughter, Eva, as a single-mother in New Mexico. Despite the title of the book, \u201cthe boy\u201d is actually just a supporting character amidst the love story of a mother and daughter.<\/p>\n

Twenty-year-old Jack Strand, referred to as \u201cthe boy,\u201d is a symbol of temptation that drags Anna into a teenage obsession. Society expects a 40-something-year-old woman to be responsible enough not to become a blinded victim to lust when she has an eight-year-old daughter that needs to be watched.<\/p>\n

Yet, as Anna continues to spiral deeper into the black hole of passion, no judgment is passed due to Santoro\u2019s unrelenting honesty on the difficulty of balancing the role of a mother and being human. She brings the stressful ordeal of raising a child to life by describing scenes that an everyday mother wouldn\u2019t think of writing, such as, \u201cShe\u2019d left Eva screaming bloody murder in the car, as she stood on the curb looking in, arms crossed against the cold, tears streaming down her face.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Eva\u2019s character develops, so does Santoro\u2019s portrayal of Anna\u2019s flaws. They\u2019re emphasized by the wise-beyond-her-years role Eva plays. When Eva criticizes her mom for making out with the boy at a party, Anna\u2019s reaction to the eight-year old is, \u201cYou don\u2019t kiss boys at parties? The whole reason you go to parties, the whole reason parties were invented, is to kiss boys at parties. You don\u2019t kiss boys at parties. That\u2019s the craziest thing I\u2019ve heard in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anna\u2019s immaturity and obliviousness to the dos and don\u2019ts of parenting is also portrayed continuously through her cursing and Eva\u2019s static response, \u201cMamma, you shouldn\u2019t curse.\u201d Their role reversal becomes a lovable and integral part to the novel.<\/p>\n

The innocence of Eva\u2019s undying admiration and Anna\u2019s sincere desire to be a good mother despite her continuous mistakes are so deeply felt that it is likely Santoro was writing from her own experience. Just like Anna, she was a foreign correspondent spending much of her time in Africa until she had her daughter.<\/p>\n

As she said in an interview with Aloud,<\/i> a blog dedicated to women, \u201cI kept working in journalism for a whole year after she was born but soon came to terms with the fact that I was raising a dysfunctional child by taking off all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Similarly, Anna was also the name of Santoro\u2019s protagonist in her first and only other novel, \u201cMercy,<\/i>\u201d <\/i>which was a finalist for the Foreword Independent Press Award. It was influenced by her time in Africa as a journalist working for Newsweek <\/i>and the Christian Science Monitor<\/i>.<\/p>\n

One of Anna\u2019s significant personality characteristics, that she could not be \u201ctethered,\u201d also belongs to Santoro\u2019s organization of the novel, or lack thereof. Instead of writing in a clear timeline, Santoro jumps from present to past to interior monologue and often goes off on tangents. Because of this, there are times when rereading is necessary to fully follow the plot. Nonetheless, the plot is alluring enough that backtracking every now and then isn\u2019t discouraging.<\/p>\n

A beautiful aspect to Santoro\u2019s writing is the symbolism she adds periodically through the novel. For example, she describes how the boy, Jack, \u201chad taken over in a flash, an instant,\u201d in regards to his \u201cclutter\u201d around her home. It\u2019s clear she\u2019s speaking on two levels, the literal space his things are taking up, and the metaphorical space in her life.<\/p>\n

The boy never actually develops as a character despite the given perception that he would be the center of the novel. Instead, he serves more as catalyst towards Anna\u2019s progression as a mother. At first, the unexpected change from a romantic to a parental love story is disappointing but, as it is also a message in the novel, the latter holds more significance.<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t a happy book. It isn\u2019t a funny book. If rose-colored glasses are for you, this book isn\u2019t. It\u2019s an honest look at the selfish nature that lives inside of everybody, even a mother. This book is for the imperfect.<\/p>\n