Stories for Boys is a magnetic meditation on what happens when a decades-long lie is brutally revealed. Moving, brave, and unforgettable, this deeply personal book pushes us all further into the light.
CHERYL STRAYED
With clean vivid descriptions, and ruthless soul-wrenching self examination, Greg Martin bravely tells a story he never imagined having to tell. The reader is privileged here, to be allowed to watch as he wrestles with his sons, his own belief systems, his urge towards forgiveness and even Walt Whitman. This finely made, deeply felt memoir restores our faith in the power of language and story to make sense of a broken world.
PAM HOUSTON
Stories for Boys is a charming and moving coming-of-age story, its narrator situated in the pivotal position between being his father’s son and his sons’ father. So refreshing and unique is Martin’s treatment of the material that the reader will never mistake this book for its inferior competitors dealing with similar subjects (suicide, latent homosexuality, child abuse). One hopes this is the new wave of memoir: stories of people whole lives are not easily categorized nor dismissed. It is a sweet read.
ANTONYA NELSON
A Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
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A SEATTLE READS One City, One Book Selection
Some books hold hard truths but offer a life ring of hope and even humor in an ocean of sadness. Stories for Boys, Gregory Martin’s memoir of his family’s coming to terms with the fact that his father is a closeted gay man, is such a book.
MARY ANN GWINN, The Seattle Times
Most crucially, it is a book about truth and reconciliation, of one man with his father and his sons, and of a culture that is changing in terms of what we teach boys about sex, but not quickly enough for our children to be unscathed.
MOLLY BEER, The Rumpus
Besides his ability to write sentences of utter devastation, Martin also weaves evocative comparisons between his father and the life and writings of Walt Whitman. He makes the book all the more distinctive and accessible by including emails from his father, family photos, children’s drawings, tree house diagrams and pop culture images. Stories for Boys is, in essence, stories for everyone.
CAROLINE HORWITZ, Los Angeles Review
[Stories for Boys] becomes profoundly touching as [Gregory Martin] takes himself to task, and over it all presides the spirit of his guiding light and inspiration, Walt Whitman, able to become sympathetic with any passing stranger, open to all, forgiving to all.
NICK DIMARTINO, Shelf Awareness
Gregory Martin 