I'm conflicted in how I feel about this one. I went into it expecting a powerful, painful but necessary read. But after a while, it seems like it turned into trauma porn. Absolutely nothing goes Max's way, and he is stripped of all autonomy in every decision in his life, both due to being "a pushover" who doesn't want to rock his already fragile family and as a "scientific interest." At first, I recognized this as a reflection of his intersexuality and how it didn't feel like it belonged to him, but even after

the characters went, "Gee, maybe we should let Max have control of his own body," after his mother tells the surgeons to proceed with an abortion after Max withdraws his consent, his choices in not wanting to be around his mother anymore and not reporting his rapist to the police or his parents are taken away from him yet again.

I also found the writing itself to be quite bad. The POV shifts are frequent and often unnecessary. Aside from the literal child narrator, who is overly intelligent for his age due to autism (which is never remarked upon by any character), each character has the same narrative voice with almost no distinguishing features. The characters besides Max felt bland and two-dimensional. 

Ultimately, I feel like this is a book with important themes that it misses the mark on.

*Re-read - 2022*
This is still such an important book, and truly heart wrenching the whole way through.
I must say there are a few things like views and opinions that may be considered a little out-dated for 2022 when it comes to gender identity, but for the most part everything holds up and still has such important messages at heart. 

A wonder of a book.

*First read - 2017* 
This book is so god damned important. 
I wholeheartedly believe that EVERYONE in the whole world should read it. 

This is the first time I've found myself unable to write a review for a book I've read, but truthfully, I'm completely lost for words.

Wow...

 

Golden Boy is a novel exploring a subject I don’t think I’ve read about before - that of being intersex. It centres on Max, a 15yo who seems to have it all. Max is sporty, good looking, does well in school, has a good group of friends and comes from a loving well-off family. Except Max has a secret. He’s intersex, was born with both male and female genitalia and has never had any surgical “correction”. It’s a topic his family never really talks about - his younger brother doesn’t know - that is until a traumatic event changes everything for Max and his family. Max’s life seems to spiral out of control for a while until, thankfully, he gets the help he needs and is able to begin making decisions that are right for him about how to handle issues surrounding his gender.

I thought the depiction of sexual assault was very well done - taking the reader into Max’s head so we could experience all his emotions. It made the event incredibly real without being explicitly graphic. I also liked the intersex positive tone of the book. While Max’s mother was in favour of surgical interventions if only to make life easier for Max, his father had always opposed it believing that Max was perfect as he was. They didn’t get every parenting decision right (obviously they should have communicated a lot more with Max, especially as he got older)and they weren’t always on the same page but their hearts were in the right place. Max himself seemed generally happy with his body, but understandably worried about the reaction of others and how being intersex would impact him as he got older. A girlfriend was also positive and accepting, although initially overwhelmed. Sadly this won’t be the reality for every intersex teen but it is nice to have some literature offering positive potentials.

My one main criticism was that I felt the book was a little long and that there was a little too much teenage angst. It was perfectly understandable given the plot. But I don’t think anything would have been lost had some material been trimmed a little.

All in all I felt this book did a good job of highlighting some of the issues around being intersex, and did so in an intersex positive way.