A Kirkus Reviews Best Book About the Past, and selected as an Honor Book by the Society of School Librarians International
Teddy can't believe how fast his life has changed in just two years. When he was twelve, his father took off, and then his mother married Henry, a man Teddy despises. But Teddy has no control over his life, and adults make all the decisions, especially in 1959. Henry decides that Teddy should be sent to St. Ignatius Academy for Boys, an isolated boarding school run by the Catholic church.
St. Iggy's, Teddy learns, is a cold, unforgiving place — something between a juvenile detention center and reform school. The other boys are mostly a cast of misfits and eccentrics, but Teddy quickly becomes best friends with Cooper, a wise-cracking, Wordsworth-loving kid with a history of neglect. Despite the priests' ruthless efforts to crack down on the slightest hint of defiance or attitude, the boys get by for a while on their wits, humor and dreams of escape. But the beatings, humiliation and hours spent in the school's infamous "time-out" rooms, and the institutionalized system of power and abuse that protects the priests' authority, eventually take their toll, especially on the increasingly fragile Cooper.
Then one of the new priests, Father Prince, starts to summon Cooper to his room at night, and Teddy watches helplessly as his friend withdraws into his own private nightmare, even as Prince targets Teddy himself as his next victim.
Teddy and Cooper's only reprieve comes on Saturdays, when the school janitor, Rozey, takes the boys to his run-down farmhouse outside of town, the only place where the boys can feel normal -- fishing, playing cribbage, watching the bears at the local dump. But even this can't stop Cooper's downward spiral and eventual suicide. And just when Teddy thinks something good might come out of his friend's tragedy, he finds himself dealing with the ultimate betrayal.
Vasey uses his journalist's skill set to great effect in this first-person narrative. The book is compulsivly readable with a brisk moving plot, and every word has its place.
A Troublesome Boy is full of tension, humour, disturbing characters as well as sympathetic ones, a commentary on Catholic schools and the abuse that pupils endured in the 1950s, and a beautifully constructed narrative voice.
Sharp, perceptive and vigorously written, Vasey’s novel confronts the past in a way that rings true to adolescence in the present. Imaginative dialogue, an energetic pace and nuanced characters make this exceptional.
Vasey tackles serious subject matter with strong language and concise, intense writing.
"...it is an amazingly powerful story in a concise, concentrated package that creates believable, unique characters that will own your heart (and break your heart) faster than you can turn the pages."
A vivid, disturbing and all-too-real topical story.
Paul Vasey writes his first novel with a chilling first person narrative, often laced with humor to help readers through the darkness, and with a sense of hopefulness
... this is a story that will not be forgotten. Troublesome Boy shows a realistic, yet fictional, aspect of life for teen boys in 1959 in a Catholic run boarding school.
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