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My Life as a Myth Huston Piner 9781610404815 Books

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My Life as a Myth Huston Piner 9781610404815 Books

A wonderful, brilliant, hilarious, tragic, and all-around perfect book. The voices ring true, the characters are realistic and engaging, and the plot is a roller-coaster ride of emotions. Very highly recommended.


Tags : My Life as a Myth [Huston Piner] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. It's 1969 and high school freshman Nick Horton has got problems; he's an easy target for bullies, he's a social outcast who dreams of being popular,Huston Piner,My Life as a Myth,Prizm,1610404815,Alternative History,Mystery & Detective - General,Children's BooksAll Ages,Coming of Age,FICTION Coming of Age,Fiction,Fiction Alternative History,Fiction Mystery & Detective General,Fiction : Literary,FictionLiterary,Literary,Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

My Life as a Myth Huston Piner 9781610404815 Books Reviews

Life as a high school freshman in 1969 was not easy. Not when the staff had you targeted as a troublemaker, your boyhood best friend was growing distant and girl crazy and you just didn't see the appeal. Nick is lucky in that he's sort of adopted into a clique and quickly gets the name "Napalm Nick" and the bad-boy reputation that goes along with.

Sidekick Jesse seems to have a vested interest in expanding the Napalm Nick myth despite Nick's ambivalence. Nick would rather have a lower profile and maybe some privacy so that he could explore these feelings that he's having for Bobby.

This book was not at all what I was expecting but having graduated from high school in 1974 these guys were fascinating to me. They were my contemporaries and I was pretty sure at the time that I was the only gay one.

This is much more a well-written bildungsroman than the somewhat sweet somewhat sappy angsty M/M I was expecting. It was a pleasant surprise.

Unfortunately the ending was a bit abrupt and I felt that it had been cobbled together bringing a unsatisfying sense of tragedy to a tale that had previously balanced precariously on that edge between chaotic adventure and impending doom.

Being a realist I didn't expect a rainbows and unicorns happy ending but the ambiguous ending we do get was equally unexpected and not a little disappointing.

By all means read it and judge for yourself. The journey is definitely worth your time.
Life as a high school freshman in 1969 was not easy. Not when the staff had you targeted as a troublemaker, your boyhood best friend was growing distant and girl crazy and you just didn't see the appeal. Nick is lucky in that he's sort of adopted into a clique and quickly gets the name "Napalm Nick" and the bad-boy reputation that goes along with.

Sidekick Jesse seems to have a vested interest in expanding the Napalm Nick myth despite Nick's ambivalence. Nick would rather have a lower profile and maybe some privacy so that he could explore these feelings that he's having for Bobby.

This book was not at all what I was expecting but having graduated from high school in 1974 these guys were fascinating to me. They were my contemporaries and I was pretty sure at the time that I was the only gay one.

This is much more a well-written bildungsroman than the somewhat sweet somewhat sappy angsty M/M I was expecting. It was a pleasant surprise.

Unfortunately the ending was a bit abrupt and I felt that it had been cobbled together bringing a unsatisfying sense of tragedy to a tale that had previously balanced precariously on that edge between chaotic adventure and impending doom.

Being a realist I didn't expect a rainbows and unicorns happy ending but the ambiguous ending we do get was equally unexpected and not a little disappointing.

By all means read it and judge for yourself. The journey is definitely worth your time.

***Note I was provided with a free copy of this in exchange for an honest review as part of the GoodReads MMRG Don’t Buy My Love Program. ***
WARNING THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN WHAT SOME PEOPLE WOULD DESCRIBE AS "SPOILERS"

I have to say upfront that the technical aspects of the writing here AND its premise [and promise] were excellent. That's largely why I felt terribly disappointed when I concluded the book. This book which (with all but two chapters) both moved me and had me truly pulling for main characters Nick and Bobby, well, it came to a bad end by almost literally kicking me in the gut in a way that was both unexpected and tear-jerkingly unpleasant.

Please don't get me wrong I appreciate and can deal with endings that are up-in-the-air, that are not happy and even those that are tragic and tear-invoking. I can even embrace those endings if they make sense vis a vis what has gone before or if they surprise me in a meaningful or exalted way. But when such an ending totally - pardon the cliché - comes out of left field, then I feel taken advantage of. Please use sincerity to evoke my empathetic tears, not machinations to jerk them out of me because then there will be very little empathy to accompany them.

Yes, I understood from 's editorial description and from another review that this book was going to have "bittersweet" content; I thought I was safely through that when Nick's father returned to "normalcy" after languishing in the wake of the death of Nick's mother. But later, I knew more difficult times lay ahead for Nick and Bobby when I began to read the penultimate chapter. Sadly, that's also when the book's enticing promise began to fall apart as Bobby's parents (who had been totally intuitive and supportive of the two boys before this) made the unbelievable decision ("for the boys' own good" - sheesh) to keep Nick in the dark about what had happened to Bobby. This was totally out-of-character for them. Further UN-willing suspension of common sense was demanded of the reader when Nick's truest friend (other than Bobby), the tolerant and open-minded senior Brian, turned his back on Nick in just a totally inconceivable way. The bridge-building Brian we had gotten to know would not have done that even though tolerance levels and times were admittedly different in the early 1970s setting.

An enthusiastic reader had built a special, almost sacred place in his heart for Nick & Bobby, for Bobby's parents, for Nick's brothers and for Brian.

Then the last chapter became the previously described kick in the gut wherein that reader was left with next-to-nothing to fill that special place; was left with next-to-nothing to grasp onto for the time and emotion invested in this story. Like I said, I do not insist upon a happy ending for me to consider a book or movie to be great see, for example, my reviews of COWBOYS CAN FLY, SAME CELL ORGANISM, BOYS LOVE (YAOI) and the movie LILIES. But I need my sadness and/or emptiness to be meaningful - NOT manipulated.

Here, via manipulation, we are either left with nothing or - perhaps more likely the case - we've been set up, soap opera-like, for sequel after sequel - but without a word of warning to that effect from or the publisher when making a decision about buying MY LIFE AS A MYTH. I got rooked into that muckishness with J. P. Barnaby's LITTLE BOY LOST series and it took maybe 3 years and seven volumes for me to read my way out of that mess. Lately, I've been tricked in a similar way by several other M4M authors and publishers. I'll not do it again if I can help it. If your story cannot stand alone and be read and enjoyed as a single volume, then you have an obligation to tell the prospective purchasor at the very beginning!

Either way, I was let down here.
A wonderful, brilliant, hilarious, tragic, and all-around perfect book. The voices ring true, the characters are realistic and engaging, and the plot is a roller-coaster ride of emotions. Very highly recommended.