‘So what am I sup­posed to do?’

‘You take a deep breath, you grow up and you man up. You have a daugh­ter now…’

You’ve got it all planned out. A sum­mer of free­dom, uni­ver­sity, a career as a jour­nal­ist — your future looks bright. But then the door­bell rings. It’s you ex-girlfriend, and she’s car­ry­ing a baby.

Your baby.

You agree to look after it, just for an hour or two. Then she doesn’t come back — and your life changes for ever.

A grip­ping and orig­i­nal story about love, rela­tion­ships and grow­ing up the hard way.’ 

I am a huge fan of Mal­o­rie Black­man and advo­ca­tor of her work ever since I first read Noughts and Crosses many years ago. Not only does Black­man cre­ate extremely well writ­ten books with relat­able char­ac­ters, but she also tack­les dif­fi­cult, some­times con­tro­ver­sial, sub­jects for YA lit­er­a­ture, in an hon­est and thought pro­vok­ing way. Boy’s Don’t Cry is a pow­er­ful and unex­pected novel. I couldn’t put it down and ended up read­ing through until 5 in the morn­ing, and then I couldn’t sleep for think­ing about it.

In light of the world­wide out­cry in response to that WSJ arti­cle, it was per­haps fit­ting that I was read­ing Boys Don’t Cry when #YAsaves exploded all over the inter­net this past week. I also imag­ine it would prob­a­bly make it onto Mrs. Gurdon’s list of ‘vio­lent’ books — but she would, of course, be miss­ing the point.

Boys Don’t Cry is told from two points of view, Dantes’ and Adams’ — to begin with the rea­son for this is unclear and though I liked Adam’s upbeat nar­ra­tive in con­trast to Dante’s, I couldn’t fig­ure out why we were switch­ing between the two. This lasted for about 70 pages and from then on I was hooked. I hadn’t realised when I started read­ing Boys Don’t Cry that this was a book about much, much, more than just teenage par­ent­hood — Black­man has blended together two sto­ries that deal with two very dif­fer­ent top­ics. I’m not going to spoil it for any­one by telling you every­thing this one book man­ages to cover, and cover well. I will say that though, that while I loved both sto­ries, it was Adam I grew par­tic­u­larly attached to as a char­ac­ter, and it was his voice and his jour­ney that struck me the hard­est and stayed with me long after I had fin­ished read­ing it.

Boys Don’t Cry takes a unique look at being a teenage par­ent, as it is told from the boys point of view. I have to applaud Black­man for choos­ing to do this as it is a topic that young male read­ers should be able to read about and because too often (in life and in books) the father is either for­got­ten, or con­sid­ered less impor­tant in a child’s life. Then there is the stereo­type that if any­one will walk away, it will be the father. In typ­i­cal fash­ion, Black­man dis­putes all these assump­tions (and more) in Boy’s Con’t Cry. She is an author you can depend upon to chal­lenge the every day stereo­types all around us — her writ­ing makes you think and I love her for it.

A few scenes that stood out for me were when Dante takes his daugh­ter out for the first time and has to deal with strangers’ prej­u­dices and judge­ment once they learn Emma is his.

‘The expres­sion on the woman’s face changed dra­mat­i­cally. Her eyes were wide, her mouth open in shock. ‘She’s your daugh­ter?’ she asked scan­dal­ized. She didn’t say it qui­etly either. More peo­ple in the queue turned round. My face began to burn. ‘She’s your daugh­ter?’ the woman repeated, even louder than before just in case there was some­one in the coun­try ho hadn’t heard her the first time. ‘How old are you? she con­tin­ued, her eyes narrowing. 

None of your busi­ness, that’s  how old I am, I thought bel­liger­ently. I glanced at Col­lette. She was look­ing down, embarrassed.

‘Well? the woman persisted. 

‘Sev­en­teen’, I said reluctantly. 

Instant facelift. Her eye­brows almost hit her dyed blond hair­line. ‘Seventeen?’

Oh my God. The echo in this shop was truly astound­ing. The woman looked Col­lette up and down like Col­lette wasn’t much. 

‘Don’t look at me. It’s not my baby,’ Col­lette pro­claimed. ‘I’m just a friend. It has noth­ing to do with me.’ .… One glance revealed only too clearly that the blonde didn’t believe her. ‘Kids hav­ing kids, the woman sniffed. ‘And no doubt you’re not work­ing and liv­ing off benefits.”

Black­man really nails this scene. I see and hear peo­ple dis­miss­ing young par­ents all the time, always assum­ing they are lazy and exploit­ing the ben­e­fit sys­tem. By expe­ri­enc­ing this type of pub­lic reac­tion with Dante, Black­man really hits home just how hurt­ful and wrong it is to judge peo­ple with­out know­ing them — remind­ing us that just because some­one is a young par­ent — doesn’t mean they are a bad one.

Though Boys Don’t Cry focuses on the prej­u­dices young dads receive in our soci­ety, here Black­man briefly touches on how young moth­ers are looked down on and treated by soci­ety as well — you can almost see the word ‘slut’ form­ing in this woman’s mind as she looks at Col­lette. It is a sharp reminder not to judge Melanie too harshly for run­ning out (another stereo­type — it is con­sid­ered pretty nor­mal for the father to leave, but unfor­giv­able if the mother does), as this is doubt­less what she would of dealt over and over again, on her alone, for the past 18 months.

Black­man also writes some fan­tas­tic scenes sur­round­ing the local social worker. We imme­di­ately feel as defen­sive towards her as Dante does and assume she is not only a busy­body pok­ing her nose in but also that she is out to trick Dante and wants to take Emma away from him. Why do auto­mat­i­cally feel this way? It seems not a day can go by with­out the papers report­ing some­thing deroga­tory about social work­ers. I loved that as we, and Dante, got to know her a lit­tle bet­ter, we see that this woman only wants the best for Emma and is, in real­ity, there to help Dante keep his daugh­ter. It was great, for once, to see a social worker por­trayed as some­one who cares, who has a dif­fi­cult, at times impos­si­ble, job, and who has to deal with an unfair rep­u­ta­tion. I think soci­ety in gen­eral for­gets what an incred­i­bly hard and incred­i­bly amaz­ing job these peo­ple can, and do, do. Once again we have another char­ac­ter who, in their own way, has to fight against society’s opin­ion of them, a char­ac­ter who has been judged unfairly; prompt­ing the reader to con­front their own reac­tions and their own prej­u­dices as they read.

Watch­ing Dante fall in love with his daugh­ter is heart­warm­ing with­out being overly sen­ti­men­tal — the tone in this book is just right to appeal to young male and female read­ers. What’s so great about Boys Don’t Cry is that it isn’t a cute story. It deals with the harsh real­ity of life as a teenage par­ent and doesn’t shy away from dif­fi­cult and, at times, shock­ing truths. Dante doesn’t love his daugh­ter imme­di­ately, or choose her above his own desires — it is hard, he has to make many sac­ri­fices and deal with a lot of pres­sure from every­one around him. He comes close to break­ing down and almost hits Emma — a feeling/moment I’m sure a lot of stressed out par­ents can relate to, but one that no one really talks about. We come to under­stand that com­ing close to snap­ping doesn’t make Dante a bad per­son, but walk­ing away from the sit­u­a­tion and ask­ing for help does make him a good father. Through­out there is a lovely fam­ily dynamic and I enjoyed read­ing how cer­tain events bring this fam­ily closer together and how they come out all the more stronger for it.

If Dante’s story is touch­ing, Adam’s story is hard-hitting and heart­break­ing. Already  a strong piece of fic­tion, this is what made Boys Don’t Cry unfor­getable for me. Both Adam and Dante are obstri­cized by soci­ety but for very dif­fer­ent rea­sons and watch­ing them deal with that, and read­ing about what hap­pens them, is both upset­ting and uplift­ing — par­tic­u­larly in Adam’s case. I loved his char­ac­ter from the start.

In white for those who wish to remain spoiler free: It was refresh­ing to read about a char­ac­ter who is unashamed of his sex­u­al­ity and Black­man makes a vitally impor­tant point that some younger read­ers may not yet under­stand: that Adam doesn’t choose to be gay, it is who he is and more impor­tantly, he is happy with who he is. (End spoiler).

What made this novel so bril­liant for me were the char­ac­ters. All of them, even the sec­ondary char­ac­ters, felt very real — we can iden­tify with them. Read­ing this story and expe­ri­enc­ing things from a dif­fer­ent point of view makes us ques­tion our own opin­ions and prej­u­dices. Boys Don’t Cry tack­les many impor­tant sub­jects: teenage preg­nancy, homo­pho­bia, sui­cide, depres­sion, stereo­types, sex edu­ca­tion. It shows us the impor­tance of under­stand­ing, com­pas­sion and accep­tance — and the power of words. The courage to be your­self and to con­front igno­rance and hatred in all its forms. A stun­ning book that every one should pick up, regard­less of age or gen­der — because I think you will learn some­thing about your­self and oth­ers by the end of it. Beau­ti­ful story, beau­ti­ful char­ac­ters and beau­ti­ful nar­ra­tion. And yes — it made me cry.

Rec­om­mended Read­ing Age: 14+

Rat­ing: 9/10