The Boys of My Youth

February 2, 1998
Moments of profundity abut glimpses of life at its most mundane in this vividly realized collage of episodes from the author's life. The 12 personal narratives collected here, five of which are reprinted from magazines, unfold more thematically than chronologically. "Cousins," for example, explores kinship and female bonding, while the title piece confronts the difficulties and pleasures of women's relationships with men. This scheme allows freelance writer Beard to juxtapose childhood episodes with scenes from her adult life in a manner that illustrates how our past experiences continually inform our interpretations of similar situations later in life. An ongoing concern of this collection is the way people establish connections and how these connections are broken through divorce, death and other forms of separation; themes like the endurance of friendship and kinship are also explored. Beard's self-scrutiny is painstaking and free of self-absorption, and her keen eye for details grounds each episode in its historical moment.

Jo Ann Beard's narration of her autobiographical remembrances of boys [and girls] past is low-key, recounting her early family life, starting with her observations from within the bars of her crib, her perceptions of those around her, her alcoholic father, her mother's death, and her interactions with others. She tells of the day she stayed home to take care of her sick dog and a crazed employee massacred her co-workers. Yet even this high drama limps along, delivered in a monotone that might be mistaken for intimacy but is, sadly, just dull. While the nature of memory is rambling and not specific, perhaps in the hands of a professional, skilled narrator these bits and pieces from Beard's girlhood and adult life might have been engaging. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine