Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - Ponyboy: A Novel

"What dreams do I live with ink on page/how do I know which words and when/how do I know I'm man/except that/I do, that/I am."

I found this book to be immensely beautiful. The story was transcendent, the characters were multidimensional, and the writing was so, so gorgeous. It was poetic, even though the contents of the novel were, at times, not poetic things.

For me, the highlights of this book were the writing style, Baby's character, and the ending. I think the world needs a colab between Eliot Duncan and Ocean Vuong so we can have the ultimate piece of Sad Queer Poetic Literature. Like On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, this story shies away from nothing, leaving in the gritty details of the love, loss, and grief of a young adult. Although Ponyboy was difficult to read at times, both because of its subject matter and unique style of writing, I do not think that one bit of it was unnecessary. Ponyboy's triumph and pain and guilt and regret were so tangible. The relationships in this book were so real, whether they be with friends (like Toni and Lee), family (Mom & June) or lovers (Baby and Gabriel). My favorite was Ponyboy's relationship with Baby, who was one of my favorite characters in this book. She managed to be both supportive of Ponyboy and kind to her own self, and although I would never consider her relationship with Ponyboy to be healthy, characters like her aren't shown very often in books.

This book hovered between day dream and nightmare, feeling both euphorically beautiful and dismally depressing at certain points. It also read the way a fever dream feels, confusing and uncontrolled. Normally I'm not a huge fan of dialogue without quotation marks, but I feel like it really worked here. It was easy to feel the shift in the text as Ponyboy got more sober, and although the lack of quotation marks were originally somewhat chaotic, I found them to be more stable by the end. I also loved the autobiographical aspect of this, especially the ending.

Ponyboy is just so, so quotable. I found myself reading with a pencil in hand, underlining fragments and sentences that I found beautiful. I'll close out this review with my favorite quote:

"Futility is necessary. There are no means to my ends."

5/5 stars.

Content Warnings

rkjreads's review against another edition

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2.25

I struggled with this one a bit. I was tempted to put it down at times, I found the prose difficult but perhaps it's just more poetic than I'm used to. It made things hard to follow at times, and I found some of it a bit cringey although this is consistent with the main character so I can believe it's a stylistic choice.

It follows a trans character struggling with addiction, which for me felt hard to read but again, I believe it's an accurate description of addiction which is all-consuming. I found the exploration of the MC's gender to be intriguing, especially as it intersects with his addiction.

There was a scene about two thirds through where the MC experiences an episode of bulimia which felt out of place. Body image/struggling with food had not come up at all previousy so it seemed to come out of nowhere and was not mentioned again.

There are also a few typos I noticed which took me out of it a bit.

I did start to enjoy it more towards the final quarter of the book which felt more nuanced and grounded, this makes sense given what the MC is experiencing. Overall, I think it paints a strong picture of this character and his struggles through addiction as well as his relationship with gender. Would be interested to read more from this author.

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