Box Hill
Subtitle: A Story of Low Self-Esteem
Edition: First New Directions edition
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2020
Place of publication: New York, NY, USA
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 112
ISBN-13: 9780811230056
First sentence: Box Hill where the bikers go, on a Sunday.
Description: "In Box Hill, a vivid coming-of-age novel, a young man suddenly wakes up to his gay self--on his eighteenth birthday, when he receives the best gift ever: love and sex. In the woodsy cruising grounds of Box Hill, chubby Colin literally stumbles over glamorous Ray--ten years older, leather-clad, cool, handsome, a biker, and a top. (Colin, if largely unformed, is nevertheless decidedly a bottom.) Colin narrates his love--conveying how mind-blowing being with Ray is--in comically humble-pie terms. "If there are leaders then there must be followers, and I had followership skills in plenty just waiting to be tapped. To this day I can't see a fat kid in shorts without wanting to rush over and give him what comfort I can. To tell him it won't always be like this." Mars-Jones uses Colin's naivete to give a fresh view of the world and of love. Before long, however, homophobia, class, family strife, and loss rear their ugly heads. Yet in the end, it seems Colin's modest view oddly takes in the widest horizon: he learns that "people can care about anything." A surprise and a pleasure, Box Hill is an intensely moving short novel"--