The Boys’ Club by Amanda Swift
Sep. 15th, 2007 12:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Joe is twelve and VERY worried about girls. Girls turn boys into dribbling wrecks. Girls make you ditch football practice and your mates to go snogging in their bedrooms for hours. Joe knows. He's seen it happen to his brother.
Joe wants none of it. And he doesn't want his friends to change either. So he comes up with the Boys' Club: a top-secret organisation where boys can be boys and girls have NOTHING to do with them. But in reality life's a little more complicated than that - and things do change. And, with the arrival of Alex, a new face around school, Joe's life is about to change more than most ...
This is an entertaining book, very well written and with good pace. Joe is a likeable boy as he tells his story and there are some very nice moments in it, e.g. his horror as he sees his friends succumb to girls' machinations, the observations about one of his teachers who suddenly becomes assertive as a result of taking a course.
There were some things that I'd like to have seen developed more - particularly the way in which Joe's house was structured. I liked the fact that the house had been divided into thirds between his estranged parents and I liked the effect this had on Joe and his brother Matt, but I felt that more could have been made of it, particularly towards the end of the book where I thought that there wasn't enough of a resolution between Joe's parents - do they get back together or does life go on as before? I also thought that the book skirted over the obvious issue in the relationship between Joe and Alex because I would assume that any 12 year boy would at least consider whether Alex was gay, but apart from one line from Joe's father it just doesn't seem to come up, which I think took away some of the credibility.
The other comment I'd make is that I got the feeling the book was aimed at boys, but there's an awful lot about feelings in there that I'm not sure many 12 year old boys could relate to. In particular, Joe seems very worried about his friends falling in love and falling in love himself - I don't know whether 12 year old boys really think like that but I would imagine that 12 year old girls would like to think that boys would feel like that.
All in all though, it's an enjoyable book with a nicely handled twist at the end.
The Verdict:
It's a shame that the book doesn't explore the possible gay angle more because that was the obvious thing that came to my mind. But this is nevertheless an enjoyable story, one likely to appeal to 9 or 10 year olds and there's some good humour in it.
Joe is twelve and VERY worried about girls. Girls turn boys into dribbling wrecks. Girls make you ditch football practice and your mates to go snogging in their bedrooms for hours. Joe knows. He's seen it happen to his brother.
Joe wants none of it. And he doesn't want his friends to change either. So he comes up with the Boys' Club: a top-secret organisation where boys can be boys and girls have NOTHING to do with them. But in reality life's a little more complicated than that - and things do change. And, with the arrival of Alex, a new face around school, Joe's life is about to change more than most ...
This is an entertaining book, very well written and with good pace. Joe is a likeable boy as he tells his story and there are some very nice moments in it, e.g. his horror as he sees his friends succumb to girls' machinations, the observations about one of his teachers who suddenly becomes assertive as a result of taking a course.
There were some things that I'd like to have seen developed more - particularly the way in which Joe's house was structured. I liked the fact that the house had been divided into thirds between his estranged parents and I liked the effect this had on Joe and his brother Matt, but I felt that more could have been made of it, particularly towards the end of the book where I thought that there wasn't enough of a resolution between Joe's parents - do they get back together or does life go on as before? I also thought that the book skirted over the obvious issue in the relationship between Joe and Alex because I would assume that any 12 year boy would at least consider whether Alex was gay, but apart from one line from Joe's father it just doesn't seem to come up, which I think took away some of the credibility.
The other comment I'd make is that I got the feeling the book was aimed at boys, but there's an awful lot about feelings in there that I'm not sure many 12 year old boys could relate to. In particular, Joe seems very worried about his friends falling in love and falling in love himself - I don't know whether 12 year old boys really think like that but I would imagine that 12 year old girls would like to think that boys would feel like that.
All in all though, it's an enjoyable book with a nicely handled twist at the end.
The Verdict:
It's a shame that the book doesn't explore the possible gay angle more because that was the obvious thing that came to my mind. But this is nevertheless an enjoyable story, one likely to appeal to 9 or 10 year olds and there's some good humour in it.
