Boys

Set in 1966, these stories re-create the world of lower-middle-class adolescent boys coming of age in Upstate New York. Depicting violence and struggle, budding sexuality, defeats and triumphs, comedy and tragedy, David Lloyd's stories present the boys' lives with unrelenting honesty.
In "On Monday," loosely connected stories proceed chronologically from a Monday to a Tuesday morning. Each story highlights a different character's confrontations with parents, friends, teachers, the expectations of others, and the expectations of a culture and an era. Complex and distilled, ordinary and extraordinary, the voices of the boys in these stories speak to our time as well as to their own.
The narrator of the novella, "Boys Only," is thirteen-year-old Chris, a member of a small gang. Lloyd charts Chris's conflicted involvement with a girl, his obsession with a pornographic magazine, his traumatized relationships, and the disappearance of his sister. Chris's tumultuous movement through adolescence is by turns shocking, familiar, and poignant.

David Lloyd is director of the Creative Writing Program at Le Moyne College.