Dream Boy

by Jim Grimsley

Book 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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 164614516X
• ISBN13: 9781646145164
• Release Date: April 2025
• Publisher: Levine Querido
• Length: 200 Pages
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

hate to say it but this is not well written

its slow, confused writing stuck with it but even the ending was a mess disappointing loved all the other books i ordered

Suspend your rigid grasp on reality and you will love this book.

This is one of my favorite books. It is slim and wastes no time telling a story about a young man on the cusp of adulthood who moves to a small town and lives next to the rural school bus driver. A love affair ensues, but it is fraught with outside dangers. Small time hate and bigotry come into play. The ending of this book will force you to look at the way you view reality. If you can believe that true love overcomes anything, then you will love the ending. However, the rest of you will be left scratching your heads. Yes, it is not a traditional ending, but one filled with magic and hope and just enough dreams.

Heart wrenching

This book is really good. Very sad but so well written. It has a bittersweet end for those who like books like that. Highly recommend it. I actually bought two copies because I lent my first one to a friend and she never gave it back.

A delicate, ethereal vision of emotional violence

Grimsley conveys his story with a fanciful style of, well...dreaminess -- he tells us about the characters actions: he did this, he did that, in a kind of fairy tale that hovers above daily reality but isn't removed from physical feeling. The story is told as if by a precociously wise youngster who idealizes the situation, simplifies it into something abstract and poetic. And it's an especially good work because it works along the lines of emotion and our reactions to dreams in an emotional way -- our fantasies and the feelings they invoke in us are evoked from Grimsley's writing of THIS story. Nathan is a bright boy, we learn, in his sophomore year in high school -- yet kids are concerned that he skipped third grade? The characters, Nathan and Roy, should be younger judging by their speech, but it's quite possibly the colloquialisms of the setting that result in the way they talk (and making them younger would have made it seem more innocent and playful, I think, with a sense of boyhood discovery, excluding the awful emotional violence we experience at some points in the story; having them as high school students adds an edge of suspense, a roughness and unpredictability). Of course Grimsley appeals to the most common of gay fantasies -- the unlabeled boy who has sex with boys, Roy; here, portrayed not as dumb, but not as saintily intelligent and aware as Nathan, who makes observations, such as the difference in Roy's shoulders when he drives the bus one day, that, to him, render changes in the course of history. There's a feeling of constant suspense that the entire enterprise will fall apart -- that Nathan's dad will find him, that Roy will leave Nathan for his girlfriend ("I'm not your boyfriend, I have a girlfriend"). You don't want it to end tragically, you want Grimsley to let it continue, to let us down easy. Our anxiety is because we know it can't and that he probably won't. We suspect it early on -- we suspect a lot of things throughout the novel, actually; Grimsley rarely spells anything out explicitly. Occasionally his foreboding can become a bit too visible, such as when Nathan's speech begins to get especially ominous in the abandoned house, how he suggests that he'll "never leave." Grimsley is uniquely talented at creating sexual situations in which the emotional consistency is pure and recognizable, much more so than could be said to be "erotic" -- the eroticism, when there is any, is due mostly to the secrecy of the affair. Grimsley deals very intelligently and compassionately with the theme of father-son incest, especially compared to the replay of it as found with Nathan and Roy, and finally with another character. The emotional violence that Grimsley conveys is just shattering, and the detail between the relationships is very precise. The climax of the novel is terrific -- Grimsley destroys the world he's created for us. It's a violent tearing away, when a flashlight goes on the tenseness of the entire novel is brought up.

Touching, powerful, and wonderfully written

Jim Grinsley's book just came out in Hebrew. A friend who liked Winter Birds asked me to buy him this book as a present. Before I gave him the present I started to read the first chapter to see if I like it. I put the book down when I finished the last page. It is hard to say what is so enchanting in this book. It is not a sophisticated novel; it does not use literary "tricks" to create subtle meanings. And yet, there is something very powerful in the way it is told; a lyrical undertone that you feel as if you read a poetry; and a living characters that one can easily identify with, even if he or she lived in a very different culture and society.When I finished the book I had tears in my eyes. I am not sure if it was tears of joys, due to the possibility of two persons to find each other and create a special tie between them -- the word love might not be enough to convey the depth of their relations -- and to help each other find his inner self; his salvation. Or were these ties of sorrow, because their love was doomed to be destroyed by evil forces of homophobic society and wicked men (significantly, men and not women).Grimsley is also unique in his treatment of the wicked characters in the novel -- Nathan's father and Burke (due to the Hebrew translation, it's hard to know if this is how the name is spelled in English). Undoubtedly, he does not condone them. But nor does he simply castigate them either. In his unique lyric and parsimonious, almost childlike, prose, Grimsley makes them also victims of cruel and hopeless poverty and of homophobic society -- a society which does not let its men to provide for their children on one hand (as in Winter Birds) and to express their feelings when they fail to do it on the other hand. A society that condemns such revelation of tenderness and compassion to be a secret, as when Nathan and Roy establish their unusual relations. Some readers too easily condemn Nathan's mother too, for not stopping her abusive husband. I think that Grimsley would like us rather to understand why so many women find it impossible to act otherwise. In a strange way I think that Grimsley makes us sympathize will all characters, even with those we would like to hate.And finally there are all those allusions to the New Testament; not something that a Jewish man like me knows much about it. But obviously, religion and faith are crucial in this novel, both as a symbol of hypocritical society -- which applauds good virtues but condones evil -- and as a source of real hope and salvation. These are the reasons that this seemingly simple book should turn into a classic, a book to be recommended and studied i schools and colleges.

"Two Day Sugar Coma on a Second Hand Couch"

I've never been the "reading" type, especially when it comes to modern gay literature. Being a young gay man I have too easily put down many gay themed books for being typically sarcastic, venomous, too political, or just plain boring. Luckily, this book made its way into my life by chance and I am forever grateful. From the minute I flipped open the front cover (hesitantly, mind you) I found myself smirking in anticipation, reading further in shock, and sighing with inevitable delight.A select few may share the opinion that this book is "underdeveloped", for whatever "their" reason. But, that is where its beauty thrives. This is a simple story about the most basic of human emotion, and the wants and needs that surround...a love story. Jim Grimsley is so amazingly clever with words. An innocent walk through a field, a first kiss, or even a scattering of dinner plates becomes a grand event unto itself. Quite the dream. I could ramble on about the wonders within this book, but read it for yourself, and relive your teen years...they way the could have been.Thanks Jim. "Amen" :-)

Seductive, compelling tale

I read DREAM BOY a couple of years ago, shortly after its hardcover publication. I was on a business trip, and stayed up well into the night to finish what I still consider to be one of my favorite novels. Grimsley's use of the first-person is a particularly wicked turn of style: I was hooked on page one, immediately drawn into the lives of these two boys. Seductive may be a better descriptor, for DREAM BOY is nothing if not seductive. While most readers may identify with Nathan's pain and his unwavering affection for Roy, it is Roy's love for Nathan that most captivated me. Strong yet subtle, confused yet confident, his undeniable passion and desire for Nathan give the book its emotional core. An unsteady core, to be sure. But it is that unsteadiness that allows the reader to more fully appreciate Roy's love, and to more easily understand the novel's inevitable climax. Much has been written about DREAM BOY's ending, mostly comments on Grimsley's talented use of some very powerful, dream-like imagery. But I think the ending only serves to remind us that Grimsley's real genius in this tale is his careful manipulation of his readers--to the point that we are willing to believe...either that the dead can rise and angels exist, or that a tortured soul can survive and redemption exists. Either way, he is simply asking us to believe in the same hope that allowed Nathan and Roy's relationship to blossom in the first place. Tonight, I have just seen Eric Rosen's stage adaptation of DREAM BOY, at Atlanta's 7 Stages, where Mr. Grimsley is a playwright-in-residence. The performance was textually and visually precise...nearly as emotionally stunning as the book itself. James McKay's Nathan will quietly draw you in, and Christopher Graham's Roy will make you believe, just as Nathan does, that this love is real...that it is somehow worth the pain.