Reviews with content warning for Self harm - Ponyboy: A Novel

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Reviews tagging 'Self harm'

Ponyboy: A Novel by Eliot Duncan

4 reviews

james1star's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

As someone that usually dislikes books centred on a character who abuses drugs and alcohol a lot, combined with many sex scenes, this book was actually rather decent. It’s following our mc who’s chosen the name ‘Ponyboy’ whilst still figuring out what he wants to be called. The book is split into two sections, the first set in Paris and Berlin where he’s struggling in a relationship with Baby who’s unwilling or unprepared to accept his trans identity as doesn’t want to be in a ‘straight’ relationship. There is a lot of this trans longing and desire for society and the people around him to treat him the way he wants them too. The best part of this section was this coming to terms with who he is aspect of the book and his story is portrayed as very real, being confusing and messy at times too. Another thing he needs to accept is his addiction problem where there’s a constant need to attain a high and how it’s an all consuming nature. Like I said it’s messy but also very repetitive too which I personally felt was a bit too much but I did get the reason why and it shows the brutality and horrors of addiction (the fun and high times of drugs but also the very low and what can happen under, or you allow to happen when under, the influence).

The second ‘half’ of the book takes place in Iowa as Ponyboy returns home to work on his reconstruction and getting better. This is not a spoiler as says so on the blurb. I think this was definitely my favourite section, things are unraveled and despite being difficult, you get a truer nature of who he is and what the future looks like. The section with Brandon was really amazing here.

On the whole I would definitely recommend giving this a read. It can be hard at times but I do feel is worth it. Personally there was a bit too much of the content I don’t like to read though. The writing is also very pretentious at times which put me off.

Content Warnings