Loverboy

I just finished a book. I have decided that rather then letting the computer fill all my time I would pick up a book and let my mind consume another life form. I read “Loverboy” by Victoria Redel. If you have a desire to read the book, please do not read my entry, I will only ruin the ending. If you are thinking about it, in my own opinion I’d say don’t waste your time. Although other opinions say “Daring” and “highly readable and attractive…Exquisite.” I am not a literature reviewer, but who puts negative comments in their books as a selling point. And in my experience if you need to buff up the first three pages of praises I think you may be compensating for something. Like a man needing a souped up car, like a restaurant sign needing bright lights and colours or like a boy band needing the lead singer to be breathtakingly gorgeous.

The book is about a mother obsessed with the company of her child and fighting to keep the child from being just an ordinary boy. As I read through the book I was lost often in the stories of how she loves her child and spends every moment with him. I don’t understand love, I’ve said, “I love you” but without actually knowing what true love is. As I think about the narrator, name unknown, I realize more and more that this book isn’t about love but rather a woman’s attempt to bring meaning to her pathetic recluse styled life. The books biggest draw in is the narrator is struggling for life in a hospital room in the very first page of actual writing. The reader knows that it is the narrator in the room and we begin hearing stories of her life and her boy named Paul, but nicknamed every cutesy sugar coated name in history, including and most often is Loverboy.

The book is based around eclipses of the child, Paul, from birth to grade one, her own childhood and the loveless relationship with her parents, and the making of the child with her countless five-minute conception encounters. These stories lack sense and purpose. Endlessly we are reminded that this mother loves her child and told about the stories of their adventures. Rather then hearing of her erotic sexual intercourse up against the side of his car, the romance with the actual “Paul” could have developed into a great love story and a greater sense of the need to call her son Loverboy. I felt as though I was reading someone’s diary, and the sense of knowing the great adventures of the trips to the library are only important to those looking back at their own 20 years and those who are in grade four and have a sneaking desire to read their sisters diary.