Junk Boy
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- ¥1,700
発行者による作品情報
Bestselling author Tony Abbott’s YA novel-in-verse is an unflinching and heartbreaking look at a boy’s junk-filled life, and the ways he finds redemption and hope, perfect for fans of The Crossover and Long Way Down.
Junk. That’s what the kids at school call Bobby Lang, mostly because his rundown house looks like a junkyard, but also because they want to put him down. Trying desperately to live under the radar at school—and at the home he shares with his angry, neglectful father—Bobby develops a sort of proud loneliness. The only buffer between him and the uncaring world is his love of the long, wooded trail between school and home.
Life grinds along quietly and hopelessly for Bobby until he meets Rachel. Rachel is an artist who sees him in a way no one ever has. Maybe it’s because she has her own kind of junk, and a parent who hates what Rachel is: gay. Together the two embark on journeys to clean up the messes that fill their lives, searching against all odds for hope and redemption.
Narrated in Bobby’s unique voice in arresting free verse, this novel will captivate readers right from its opening lines, urging them on page after page, all the way to its explosive conclusion.
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Bobby Lang lives with his distant, verbally abusive father, who has an alcohol dependence, in a neglected house overrun by all manner of detritus and rusting scrap. Solitary and friendless, Bobby scurries through high school alone, called "Junk" by peers and straining to remain as invisible as possible. He wants only to be left alone to make space for himself in the rotting shell of a 1967 VW bus that once belonged to his mother, but after accidentally witnessing the public humiliation of Rachel, a talented, queer artist and schoolmate whose mother violently rejects her sexual orientation, the two emotionally abandoned teens begin an uneasy friendship that forces them to reckon with their definitions of salvation and sacrifice. Writing in spare, straightforward verse, Abbott (The Summer of Owen Todd) deftly captures the characters' hurt at feeling forgotten and misunderstood, the isolation of coming-of-age under traumatic circumstances, and the solace, in the form of the local priest, of being seen and accepted. Graceful in execution and in substance, Bobby and Rachel's moving story is emotionally satisfying. Ages 14 up.
