Will I love The Boys of My Youth?

I may never have written nonfiction had I not read and taught these astonishing essays. (I first read this book nearly twenty years ago, and I still teach Beard’s essays.)

Beard makes me believe in the complete personhood of her young narrators (sometimes young enough to be sleeping in cribs), and their ability to be the vehicle through which she can remember and make visible a family’s truths, secrets, and hilarities.

Beard’s work gave me license to turn my own younger self into a character who, with her intuitive understanding of her own family, could do battle for me on… show more.

This essay collection is not strictly about Jo Jo’s childhood but the pieces like “Bulldozing the Baby,” that are, are indelible. Some might argue that her childhood is not all that impossible, nothing that horrendous happens. The most tragic event for the narrator is when she accidentally damages her doll Hal, a prized transitional object, and her aunt responds by throwing him into the trash. And yet, from the perspective of the toddler JoJo, it feels tragic. Her grief is as deep as any adult’s. If the piece shows us anything, it is that the feelings of childhood are to… show more.

Technically, this is not a book about marriage. It’s not even really a book about divorce, although there is one. It’s really a book about men and love and the kind of longing we carry with us from the time we first discover sex in our teens all the way through middle age and its discontents. Although the book is technically a series of essays, it is really one long extended chronology of boys met, men married, risks taken, failures unanticipated. You will laugh, cry and cringe in recognition.