The Boy: A Novel
(Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)

Lara Santoro. (2013). The Boy: A Novel. Little, Brown and Company.

Lara Santoro. 2013. The Boy: A Novel. Little, Brown and Company.

Lara Santoro, The Boy: A Novel. Little, Brown and Company, 2013.

Lara Santoro. The Boy: A Novel. Little, Brown and Company, 2013.

OverDrive Product Record

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title

The Boy

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   • bioText: Lara Santoro spent most of her career as a foreign news correspondent, based primarily in Rome and in Nairobi working for Newsweek and the Christian Science Monitor. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Comparative Literature from Smith College, a Master's degree in French Literature from the Sorbonne, and a Master's in Fine Arts from New York University. She was born in Rome, and currently lives in New Mexico. She is also the author of Mercy.
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title

The Boy

fullDescription

Anna has always been a risk-taker and a free spirit, but now she is raising a young daughter on her own and she has to play it safe. Her twenty-something neighbor with the slow, easy smile is in no way part of Anna's plans. She resists temptation in every way she can, yet Anna is soon drawn into a reckless and obsessive affair.
Provocative, headlong, and utterly compelling, The Boy is the story of a woman on the edge, torn between love and compulsion, desire and duty. Lara Santoro writes in "hypnotic and swiftly paced" prose (Daniel Woodrell) about the hazards of passion and motherhood and about one woman's unthinkable rebellion.
"Gorgeous, fiercely intelligent, deeply honest, and incredibly entertaining." — Anne Lamott

reviews

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     October 8, 2012
     Santoro offers an emotionally intense, but melodramatic, sequel to 2007’s Mercy. Anna, 42, thinks she’s left her hard-drinking, volatile life behind in Africa, along with her career as a war journalist. Now she and her eight-year-old daughter, Eva, are settled in New Mexico, following an acrimonious divorce from Eva’s father. Anna starts a lustful affair with 20-year-old neighbor Jack, the first of a series of spectacularly bad decisions that leave Anna vulnerable to continued self-destruction. Much as Anna’s life devolves into chaos, so too does the plot disintegrate, increasingly losing focus and direction. Anna offers some realistic insights into maternal affection and insecurity: “We have children and they’re nothing we’re prepared for.... We have children and we don’t know how.” She is, however, so unwaveringly unpleasant to everyone—her daughter, her lover, her ex-husband, her inexplicably devoted housekeeper—that it’s hard to remain interested as she spirals out of control. The affair with Jack lacks credibility, and although Santoro’s affection for the desert renders some arresting depictions of the landscape, elsewhere the prose feels hollow even as it describes moments of potential emotional richness. Agent: Elaine Markson, Markson Thoma Literary Agency.

2. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     December 15, 2012
     A contemporary Mrs. Robinson busies herself destroying lives in a small New Mexican town. Santoro (Mercy, 2007), a former foreign correspondent for Newsweek and the Christian Science Monitor, gives us Anna, a train wreck, her precocious daughter Eva and their Latina maid and de facto second parent Esperanza, aka Espi. Some semblance of domestic tranquility is overturned by the appearance of Jack, eldest son of the amused and bemused next-door neighbor, Richard Strand. Jack and Anna move toward one another with the simplicity of the heroic Jack and Jill, except Jack draws Anna not up but down, and when Eva leaves for an extended visit with her father, an uptight, witheringly sarcastic Englishman, Anna decides to plumb the depths. Anna's fierce love for her daughter cannot save her from her desire to experience her body as an object of affection and a reservoir of lust. It is a believable story, its arc tragic. Anna's friends Ree and Mia serve as a sort of spaced-out Greek chorus, and Anna's therapist Dr. Stewart's office is upholstered in platitudes. Flashbacks hint at sins that eroded Anna's first marriage, including infidelity and booze. Into this tight story, "meaning" starts to intrude. Soon, whole paragraphs of purple prose, as if pasted in from a different, and far worse, book appear, clotting the narrative. The effect is jarring, exasperating. The final act is abrupt--but punishment is a fixture of contemporary American fiction, and Anna had it coming. The central conflict, between maternal love and adult desire, is genuine. Even if Anna is damaged, her feelings are heartfelt and her crisis resonates. Apparently meaningful passages mar an otherwise solid effort to tell a compelling story.

     COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

3. • premium: True
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   • content:

     November 15, 2012
     Santoro's second novel (after Mercy, 2007), follows one woman's unraveling after an affair with a younger man propels her to reexamine her perspectives on motherhood and her own identity. A former journalist, Anna is now a single mother in her forties. She and her precocious 8-year-old daughter, Eva, are now living in New Mexico after a bitter split with Eva's father, who remains in England. An addition to their household is Espi, Eva's protective caretaker, who has alcohol and gambling problems. The neighbor's 20-year-old son, a college dropout, is inexplicably drawn to Anna, and the two begin an affair. When Eva travels abroad to spend time with her father, the boy moves in with Anna, much to the displeasure of seemingly everyone. Things inevitably begin to lurch out of control as the demons of Anna's former life come into play, and her self-involved choices lead to catastrophic events in her life and the lives of those around her. Santoro's fast-paced style aptly conveys Anna's frenetic downward spiral.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)

popularity

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shortDescription

Anna has always been a risk-taker and a free spirit, but now she is raising a young daughter on her own and she has to play it safe. Her twenty-something neighbor with the slow, easy smile is in no way part of Anna's plans. She resists temptation in every way she can, yet Anna is soon drawn into a reckless and obsessive affair.
Provocative, headlong, and utterly compelling, The Boy is the story of a woman on the edge, torn between love and compulsion, desire and duty. Lara Santoro writes in "hypnotic and swiftly paced" prose (Daniel Woodrell) about the hazards of passion and motherhood and about one woman's unthinkable rebellion.
"Gorgeous, fiercely intelligent, deeply honest, and incredibly entertaining." — Anne Lamott

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