Budget cuts at Julius P. Heil High in Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin, ignite a testosterone exodus as athletes seeking programs that will lead to scholarships leave in droves. Flynn Meaney’s novel The Boy Recession takes up the story of how Julius students make the best of a bad ratio. Although the story revolves around typical high school drama with its myriad of personalities, the spotlight falls on sixteen year old Hunter Fahrenbach, Kelly Robbins, and their immediate circle of friends.
Fahrenbach, a slacker with ambitions for little besides sleep and music, eventually proves he has depth when he performs on Open-Mic Night. His guitar/vocal solo lands him the lead in the school’s musical, Chicago, a role with life-changing power as well as an abundance of conflict with Kelly in the wings. The kind of girl that guys call ‘dude,’ Kelly is so normal she blends into the backdrop. In her dating debut, she discovers that having a boyfriend isn’t exactly a Taylor Swift song. In parallel plotlines, other characters—like the bubbly and glittery Bobbi and the entrepreneurial Eugene—also learn the awkward sham of some relationships and that “the basic foundation of seduction is etiquette” (121). Independent and motivated, these teens understand that they are the authors of their own life stories. But that’s about as deep as Meaney’s book gets.
A cotton candy tale reminiscent of a Janette Rallison or Sarah Dessen novel, The Boy Recession doesn’t push very hard or far. Occasionally it rises above the fluffy and the insubstantial with its message about anger as an energy leech and with its attempt to illustrate the injustice of spoiled kids and the shallowness of popularity cliques like the “spandexers,” girls who use their power and beauty to bully others. Intertextuality also enriches the novel, which features allusions to subjects such as Jackson Pollock, Zac Efron, Pride and Prejudice, and the sirens from The Odyssey. Given these elements, the book earns status as a beach book, a sugary treat to indulge a fairy tale craving. Perhaps its most interesting feature is the parallel story told by the book’s biracial budding journalist and Cosmo reader, Aviva Roth. Just as a picturebook employs images and peritext, Roth’s newspaper column headlines which headnote every chapter serve to complement and to extend the storyline. This interrelationship invites a more fruitful, recursive reading.
- Posted by Donna L. Miller