Golden Boy: A Novel Paperback – August 19, 2014

Enjoyed the story.I despised the mother, Karen and her motives. By the time the story attempts to rehabilitate her, it was too late - at least for me. She kept spouting unbelievable nonsense about how she wanted the best for Max and yet... She clearly wanted what was best for her. The father was the quiet champion of Max.I listened to this as an audiobook. Still not convinced it's the best way to experience a book.Great writing and loved the story!

The birth of any baby born outside of all perfection comes with a time of mourning. No matter the unconditional love, the imperfect child is born with dreams shattered and life arcs disrupted. We meet Max as a ten year old who has his own version of dreams disrupted. He has traveled further than the panicked fear of his parents. Yet he has a secret known to his parents, and his parents ' best friends including the somewhat disquieting Hunter.Max has grown to be the golden boy, the one everyone admires. He is smart. He is athletic. He is inter-sex .In the end, in my opinion, the nature of Max's secret is only marginally more important than the fact the secret has been kept, sometimes at cost. While its nature dictates the specific issues of the plot line, to me anyone who shares a self view of not being right would understand the currents of meaning. Yes the concept of a child with indeterminate sexuality is a more loaded concept in literature, yet one in a hundred live births have some degree of ambiguity. For all of his success, a child must always feel other when the specifics of his life are a deeply guarded secret.The plot could easily devolve into melodrama and I credit the author's skill in avoiding that tempting trap. In secrecy lies the spawning of abuse and shame. The subject matter is something different, and that does attract a level of novelty. However I continue to find that the mundane and commonly shared aspects of this story are its strength. I found the characters to be well developed, and felt empathy for most of them. I especially enjoyed Max and I think you will be glad to meet him while you ponder the world as it craves the nonexistent perfect person.

I don’t think anything I write will give this book justice, but I genuinely loved this book and its characters and overall message. This isn’t just a love story. It’s a story about life.I think the most important thing I took out of reading this was the fact that this was such a real story, besides it being technically fiction. The feelings were real. The inner turmoil that Max faced throughout the story was real. The events that took place were as real as they could get. That’s probably what scared me the most.I’m fairly ignorant when it comes to gender binary and people who are intersex so GOLDEN BOY was definitely educational and left me thinking that people may not always identify with the gender they were born with and that’s okay. So long as they remember that they are a living person, their gender is not needed to classify who they are. We are all human in the end, regardless of what our gender may be.I don’t want to give too much away, so I will leave you with this: GOLDEN BOY is an eye-opening, intense, and eloquently written story about Max and the problems he faces being intersex. I cried, I laughed, but more importantly, I felt empathy. I needed this story more than I thought I did. If a book can move me the way GOLDEN BOY did, it will more than likely stay with me long after I have finished it.Abigial Tarttelin is an incredibly talented writer and is now one of my favorite authors. Thank you so much for wrecking me completely and for this story.If you haven’t already read this book, please find the time to do so. I’m so genuinely grateful that I did.

WARNING, WARNING, Do not start this book if you have anything you need to do during the day, or need to sleep at night. This book literally rocked my world. It is brilliant.This is a story of an intersex child named Max. Nothing has been done to change Max since Max was a baby, so Max grows up identifying as a male, but is really both male and female. (That may seem some awkward wording, but it just shows how intrenched we are at labeling anyone a he or a she right from the beginning.) So, this situation is kept secret by Max's parents, and even Max knows Max is different, but has little information about this condition. Max knows kissing is as far as Max will go, but seems content just being Max. (Do you see how hard it is not to use an identifying he or she.") When Max reaches the age of sixteen, a compelling event takes place that changes everything. All the secrets that have been kept, all the questions that Max has never asked come boiling to the surface, and nothing can ever be the same again.At times this book had me in tears. The hardships and humiliation our society puts on others through deeming some not "normal." All the tragedies that could be prevented if we just accepted people as they are. All the secrets that kill our soul. For what? All to appease those who are fearful of anyone who is different? Who decides what "normal" is anyway.This is an intense read, and I adore any author who is able to put such a poignant story together. Really, drop everything, and read this book.

This book is reasonably well written. I sympathized and understood the suffering of the main character. But there was no right answer for how to handle intersexuality. Everyone that has ever been a parent has had to make decisions for their children. You do the best you can. The parents relationship fell apart without sufficient cause. These people had the money to take years off work with out a problem. Very few families could do this. All in all, interesting but pointless.