Stories for Boys
A Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
In this memoir of fathers and sons,
Gregory Martin struggles to reconcile the father he thought he knew with
a man who has just survived a suicide attempt; a man who had been
having anonymous affairs with men throughout his thirty-nine years of
marriage; and who now must begin his life as a gay man. At a tipping
point in our national conversation about gender and sexuality, rights
and acceptance, Stories for Boys is about a father and a son finding a
way to build a new relationship with one another after years of
suppression and denial are given air and light.Martin’s memoir is quirky and compelling with its amateur photos and grab-bag social science and literary analyses. Gregory Martin explores the impact his father’s lifelong secrets have upon his life now as a husband and father of two young boys with humor and bracing candor. Stories for Boys is resonant with conflicting emotions and the complexities of family sympathy, and asks the questions: How well do we know the people that we think we know the best? And how much do we have to know in order to keep loving them?
Praise for STORIES FOR BOYS
Stories for Boys is a magnetic meditation on what happens when a decades-long lie is brutally revealed. Moving, brave, and unforgettable, this deeply personal book pushes us all further into the light.
CHERYL STRAYED, author of Wild
With clean vivid descriptions, and ruthless soul-wrenching self examination, Greg Martin bravely tells a story he never imagined having to tell. The reader is privileged here, to be allowed to watch as he wrestles with his sons, his own belief systems, his urge towards forgiveness and even Walt Whitman. This finely made, deeply felt memoir restores our faith in the power of language and story to make sense of a broken world.
PAM HOUSTON, author of Contents May Have Shifted
Stories for Boys is a charming and moving coming-of-age story, its narrator situated in the pivotal position between being his father’s son and his sons’ father. So refreshing and unique is Martin’s treatment of the material that the reader will never mistake thi sbook for its inferior competitors dealing with similar subjects (suicide, latent homesexuality, child abuse). One hopes this is the new wave of memoir: stories of people wholse lives are not easily categorized nor dismissed. It is a sweet read.
ANTONYA NELSON, author of Bound.
