Black Sheep Boy by Martin Pousson Lovolution by Jesse Rhines, PhD, (pre-publication)
Black Sheep Boy (BSB) has some things in common with my, hopefully, soon-to-be-published novel, Lovolution and with remembrances of my own family. Both books are about (1) the early life of a schoolboy, (2) but BSB and my family recollections concern pre-college days (3) while Lovolution goes through and beyond graduate school. All three have fairly dark underpinnings that dovetail with sexual mystery, psychological confusion and societal misgivings. I view Lovolution as Catcher in the Rye meets American Psycho. BSB protagonist, Boo, is a Cajun boy born in Louisiana and raised by an originally Pentecostal mother turned Catholic. My mom was Catholic too and my brother, like Boo, attended Catholic school. Even before school both boys at least suspected that they were gay. Both were also neat-freaks, ready to clean up the messes at home that other kids left behind. In third grade at my school, boys jeered each other with the term “punk”. I called my brother that once and he nearly blew his lid off scolding me. I was confused, especially after the dictionary told me that a punk was just a piece of wood. Boo’s cousins called him “fag” when he cleaned up their mess and his response was perplexity as he rubbed the chest of his G.I. Joe toy soldier. Bradley, Lovolution’s protagonist, falls in love with books before he enters school and seeks them out in public libraries and in a dilapidated bookstore where he interacts with war veterans who lecture him on the evils of global politics. The vets look on as he meets and kisses his first love, a girl his age that dies soon after the couples’ first and only teen sexual encounter. Bradley continues school but is haunted by confusion over the nature of love and how it is interwoven with worldly evils. Both Bradley and Boo experience significant self-doubt and delusions as they continue through school. Challenges, often sexual/romantic, that do not yield satisfactory self-conceptualization bedevil them. Young Boo enters then leaves a psychiatric ward and Bradley leaves his fiancé at the altar before putting an end to his confusion.