Our Beautiful Boys

When the star players on a high school football team are accused of violence by another student, their secrets—and the secrets of their parents—threaten to shatter their entire community in a gripping novel of race, class, and privilege from the author of Members Only. “Timely and timeless . . . gorgeous yet understated storytelling . . . The struggles in Our Beautiful Boys are not exceptional dilemmas but rather uncomfortably common situations.”—Nic Stone, The New York Times Book Review Vikram Shastri has always been a good kid. He’s got a 4.6 GPA, listens to his parents, barely hits the parties, and is on track for a fancy college. But when he gets the chance to play on his high school football team, his world suddenly starts to shift. Basking in their recent victory, Vikram and his teammates Diego and MJ attend a party at an abandoned house in the Southern California foothills, located right below three ancient caves. They find themselves lost in the dark of night in one of the caves, carried away by male bravado, with a classmate who has annoyed them for years. But when the kid emerges with injuries that prove to be more serious than the all-star boys intended, they are suspended for the rest of the season, and the boys’ parents are brought in to manage the situation. As the parents try to protect their boys, they are also managing their own complicated family and professional lives. While the parents work with, and against, one another to figure out the truth about that night, the boys must come to terms with how much of their own secrets they’re willing to reveal to clear their names. Insightful and deeply human, Our Beautiful Boys is about race and class, parents trying to raise good boys in our fraught times, and the conflict we find when all of these slam together. It’s about the kids inside each parent and the games the world makes each of us play.
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'An insightful, nuanced story of class, identity and friendship ... I couldn't put it down' CHARLES YU 'A blazing portrait of the contemporary American family' KIRSTEN CHEN 'Compassionate and propulsive ... A deftly woven tale of fraying loyalties and family secrets' TANIA JAMES I know my son. I know what he is and what he's not capable of. Revelling in the triumph of a high school football win, MJ, Vikram and Diego find themselves at an ill-fated party, on a night that ends with the school bully in hospital. When no one comes forward with the truth of what actually happened, all three teenage "all stars" are suspended for the rest of the season, their futures suddenly uncertain. In the aftermath, the families gather to assess the damage to their children's prospects, their reputations and their own relationships. As other secrets begin to bubble to the surface, each parent attempts to navigate the crisis at hand, confronted with their own inner turmoil and the question none of them want to face: how well can you ever truly know your own child? Our Beautiful Boys is a page-turning and incisive novel about masculinity, race, education and privilege, and the conflict that arises when all these collide.