Read Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley Free Online

Book Title: Dream Boy
The author of the book: Jim Grimsley
Edition: Touchstone
The size of the: 966 KB
City - Country: No data
Date of issue: January 30th 1997
ISBN: 0684829924
ISBN 13: 9780684829920
Language: English
Format files: PDF
Loaded: 1141 times
Reader ratings: 4.1

Read full description of the books:

Powerful silent imagery.....

Grimsley uses the third person present to tell us this story. So even though we are getting Nathan's point of view, a distance is still created between us and him and him and his world. This distance mirrors the same distance that Nathan needs to be able to survive what he has been through. So with this writing tool Grimsley puts us in the picture by making us feel the distance, the silence, the invisibility, the loneliness, the wariness. The distrust Nathan feels is even transmitted in our view of Roy. We know Roy through Nathan, and like Nathan I wanted the relationship, Roy, to be something good but like Nathan I could not fully trust that he would not hurt him either.

Again Grimsley uses his words to create the surreal feel of the last third of the book. This surreal feeling left me unsure what to think, what to believe. He leaves the ending open to different interpretations. My preferred take is the one I'm going to try and take with me. (view spoiler)[ what if what happened after Burke found them was a dream. Maybe losing Roy at that moment brought back the memories Nathan strove so hard to supress and his Dad and Burke got all mixed up in a kind of nightmare. After all he always saw Burke as a violent antagonist. So his going back would be a kind of a win as he could have decide to end it there. Roy making a choice at the end between church-girl and Nathan also opens up possibilities. I don't know where they go from here everything is possible. (hide spoiler)]

It's not the kind of story which makes you happy, because it touches ugly things, this notwithstanding I found it excellently crafted. I admire how Grimsley gave a silent voice to Nathan which I heard loud and clear. All in such a short amount of pages.

BR with Ije here & here and Ira offline

Download Dream Boy PDF

Download Dream Boy ERUB Dream Boy PDF

Download Dream Boy DOC Dream Boy PDF

Download Dream Boy TXT Dream Boy PDF

Read information about the author

Jim Grimsley is a playwright and novelist. Jim's first novel, Winter Birds, was published by Algonquin Books in 1994. The novel won the 1995 Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and received a special citation from the Ernest Hemingway Foundation. Jim's second novel, Dream Boy, won the American Library Association GLBT Award for Literature (the Stonewall Prize) and was a Lambda finalist. His third novel, My Drowning, was released in January 1997 by Algonquin Books and for it he was named Georgia Author of the Year. His fourth novel, Comfort & Joy, was published in October, 1999, and was a Lambda finalist. A fantasy novel, Kirith Kirin, was published by Meisha Merlin Books in 2000 and won the Lambda in the science fiction and horror category for 2001. He has published short fiction in The Ontario Review and Asimov's and his stories have been anthologized in The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 16; Men on Men 4; Men on Men 2000; and Best Stories From the South, year 2001. Boulevard, published in 2002 by Algonquin, was again a Lambda finalist in the literature category and won Jim his second Georgia Author of the Year designation. His novel, The Ordinary, a science fiction novel published in 2004 by Tor Books, won a Lambda in the science fiction/fantasy/horror category. His latest two novels are The Last Green Tree, published by Tor Books of New York in 2006, and Forgiveness, published by the University of Texas Press as part of the inaugural James. A. Michener Fiction Series. His new story collection, Jesus Is Sending You This Message, was published in September 2008 by Alyson Books.

Jim received the Lila Wallace/Reader's Digest Writers Award for his body of work in 1997, and has twice been a finalist for the Rome Prize Fellowship in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (2003-2004). In 2005 he won an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

He served as playwright in residence at About Face Theatre in Chicago under a National Theatre Artist Residency Program grant from Theate Communications Group/Pew Charitable Trust (1999-2004); he has been playwright in residence at 7Stages Theatre in Atlanta since 1986. In 1987 he received the George Oppenheimer/Newsday Award for Best New American Playwright for Mr. Universe. His collection of plays, Mr. Universe and Other Plays,was published by Algonquin Books in 1998, and was a Lambda finalist for drama.

His books have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Hebrew, and Japanese.