Reviews with content warning for Drug use - Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family

Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family by Garrard Conley

5 reviews

james1star's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.75

TW: this book mentions mental health, suicidal thoughts, homophobic ideology, outing, rape and general self-loathing

Again this is quite a difficult book to review but from a literary perspective I’d say it is written very well with detailed (but not flowery) descriptions and flows amazingly. The memoir follows two interlocking narratives: chapters detailing the events that happened at Conley’s two weeks at Love In Action; and snippets of his life across the year before attending LIA (relationship with his ‘girlfriend’ and subsequent break up, wanting to better himself, going to uni and finding himself and passions, getting raped and outed to his parents and subsequent aftermath in response to this sprinkled with other childhood and future tense elements too). I believe this format is executed really well and despite it flipping through time it definitely flows and is easy to follow.

I wouldn’t say there was anything I disliked about this memoir only that there was some repetition in ideas which could have been omitted and did drag on a bit but nothing major. It was definitely difficult to read due to the nature of what happens to Garrard throughout the book, most notably being raped and then outed to his parents by someone he was beginning to form a great relationship with and how this heavily influenced his idea on ‘gay sex’ whether this was the ‘normal’ thing but eventually realising it for what it is. He also struggles with his mental health and suicidal thoughts but the main hard-hitting feeling that he’s constantly shown to experience is a sense of self-hate/loathing. This is super hard to read in small amounts but when it’s constant throughout the whole book… oof and it’s just so sad because he always feels like his gayness is wrong, it’s the work of the devil, it’s why bad things happen to him, it’s pushed him away from friends and family, it’s something he needs to hide, it’s the ‘stain’ on his family, it’s caused by a variety of things and many more thoughts are linked to his sexuality. Albeit a difficult read, I would still recommend it as it’s not only written well but it’s an important story to tell. The ex-gay movement is still working today with vulnerable people in conversion practices right now as you’re reading this and it’s not okay. This was truly brave of Garrard to share his story and thankfully he was able to get out of it. But even with the counselling sessions and 8 days in LIA, his time there has left a permanent mark on his life.

Wholeheartedly recommend this memoir to literally everybody - queer folks to understand relatable elements of life and recognise what is happening to those like us AND non queer people to know how these hateful ideologies are and how they can have such a lasting impact.

Content Warnings