The World of Normal Boys by K.M. Soehnlein

Like girls, boys face an enormous amount of pressure to conform to societal expectations about what it means to fulfill gender roles. Whether it’s fleeing the feminine and being tough, strong, powerful, and dominant, as Khan and Wachholz (2006) explain, or adhering to the “Boy Code,” as Gunzelmann and Connell (2006) mention, boys are expected to measure up to certain standards of masculinity as they grow and learn what it means to “be a man.”

The book that I read for this week, K.M Soehnlein’s The World of Normal Boys (2000), does an impressive job of illustrating one boy’s struggle with the pressure to be a “normal boy.” The year is 1978, and Robin McKenzie is about to enter high school. He is labeled a “brain,” his best friend is a girl, he collects Broadway cast albums, and he fantasizes about other boys. All of these aspects of his character brand him as anything but a “normal boy.”

Although Robin discovers and wrestles with his sexuality throughout the novel (along with enduring a family tragedy and learning to navigate the high school social scene), he never identifies himself as gay, which is certainly consistent with the level of awareness of this term that a 14 year-old boy in 1978 New Jersey would have had. Robin definitely worries about being a “fag,” and the “secret knowledge—how to be cool, to be tough, to get what you want” (p. 2) of being a Boy eludes him. Robin discovers (somewhat graphically) masturbation; experiences (again, rather graphically) the joy, shock, and unexpected exhilaration of first-time sex; copes with parents who confuse, embarrass, torment, love, and scold him; and tries desperately to be “cool.” Having been a 14 year-old boy in 1979 New York City who experienced many of the same things Robin experiences in this book (some of the similarities are downright eerie), I can tell you that Soehnlein gets just about all of it right.

Unfortunately, the graphic—although never gratuitous—sex, drug use, and colorful language used throughout this novel would probably prevent its use in a high school class. The World of Normal Boys is powerful stuff, and I can only hope that the boys who can benefit most from this novel will actually find it.

P.S. The website that I mentioned in class, where people post their confessions, is called PostSecret, and it’s hosted right here on Blogger.