In her newest novel, Reality Boy, Printz Honor winner A.S. King (Please Ignore Vera Dietz; Everybody Sees the Ants) explores the cost of fame and the power of narrative in the life of Gerald Faust. A reality TV show about dysfunctional families made Gerald both famous and infamous. Cast as the young villain for his "acting out," most of which was actually an attempt to defend himself from his psychotic older sister Tasha, he lived up to expectations and then some. Once a five-year-old known as "The Crapper" (in honor of "squeezing one out" as one manifestation of his rage), Gerald has grown into a friendless 17-year-old, afraid of his own emotions and still subject to Tasha's tyranny.
Introspective by necessity, Gerald often escapes into a fantasy world where everything is perfect, constructed just to make him happy. It's the complete opposite of his real life, which seems designed specifically to keep him enraged--and stuck. His mother, while maintaining a facsimile of perfection on the surface, treats him as if he is deficient and unmanageable. His father is disaffected, made powerless by his wife's obsession with keeping Tasha happy. His schoolmates treat him as if he's still that five-year-old. The bright spots in his life take place primarily at Gerald's concession-stand job at a nearby stadium. That also happens to be where his crush works--if he were allowed to have crushes, which he's not. The rules that Gerald lives by, the only things keeping him from life in prison (or so he believes), don't allow for much interaction. But in the face of outreach from others in his life, both positive and negative, his walls and his rules start to crumble.
King's books always look into the shadowed places of life, both of teenagers and parents, and few other writers do it with the honesty and sensitivity that she displays. Her ability to show all sides of the story, while never detracting from the main characters and their intense frustration with the adults and circumstances of their lives, is a marvel. Reality Boy showcases King's talent, telling a story that is as much about parental depression and denial as it is about teen rage. It's also about first love, celebrity, therapy and finding your own narrative despite the story your family--and sometimes the world--tells about you. --Jenn Northington
Shelf Talker: A Printz Honor author's story of a young man struggling with anger as he seeks a new identity for himself.