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Summary
Summary
In this fearless portrayal of a boy on the edge, highly acclaimed Printz Honor author A.S. King explores the desperate reality of a former child "star" struggling to break free of his anger.
Gerald Faust started feeling angry even before his mother invited a reality TV crew into his five-year-old life. Twelve years later, he's still haunted by his rage-filled youth--which the entire world got to watch from every imaginable angle--and his anger issues have resulted in violent outbursts, zero friends, and clueless adults dumping him in the special education room at school. No one cares that Gerald has tried to learn to control himself; they're all just waiting for him to snap. And he's starting to feel dangerously close to doing just that...until he chooses to create possibilities for himself that he never knew he deserved.
Author Notes
A. S. (Amy Sarig) King is an award-winning author of both YA and adult fiction. She was born on March 10, 1970, in Reading, PA., and obtained a degree in traditional photography from the Art Institute of Philadelphia.
King wrote her first novel in 1994, but it took her 15 years and more than seven novels to finally get published. Since then, her books have garnered many accolades. Ask the Passengers won the 2012 Los Angeles Times Book Award for Young Adult Literature. Please Ignore Vera Dietz was a 2011 Michael L. Printz Honor Book, an Edgar Award Nominee, a Junior Library Guild selection and a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick. Her first YA novel, The Dust of 100 Dogs, was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, and a Cybil Award finalist.
Her other titles include: I Crawl Through it, Glory O'Brien's History of the Future, Reality Boy, and Everybody Sees the Ants. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous collections and anthologies, including: Monica Never Shuts up, One Death, Nine stories, Losing It, Break These Rules, and Dear Bully.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
King (Ask the Passengers) drafts a nuanced portrayal of a boy saddled with the nickname the Crapper because of his infamous behavior at age five on a reality show, Network Nanny. Now almost 17, Gerald Faust is ostracized by his peers, barely keeping his violent urges at bay, and grateful for his spot in special ed because, he says, "I need to not be on my guard all the time.... I need a place where I don't need war paint to survive." Although the Network Nanny episodes about Gerald's family framed him as the problem child among his siblings, the truth was more disturbing, as King shows in flashbacks that are as uncomfortable to read as reality TV can be to watch, and equally impossible to turn away from. But this is a story about healing, and although Gerald stumbles as he takes his first steps-he frequently retreats to the fantasy world he calls Gersday and struggles to trust the girl he allows to get close-his candor invites sympathy from the first page. Ages 15-up. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
When Gerald was five, TVs Network Nanny (complete with British accent and the naughty chair) came to his house, along with camera crews, to help solve his behavior problemsapparently he screamed a lot and punched walls. Now nearly seventeen, Gerald bears the emotional scars of having his deeply dysfunctional childhood nationally televisedand worse, edited to make him seem like the troubled one in the family. He became known as the Crapper for defecating on tables and in closets, but we soon learn the reason for his behavior: his oldest sister Tasha, obviously a psychopath, had been trying, early and often, to kill him and their sister Lisi. When Gerald meets Hannah, he discovers hes not the only one with a messed-up family, and the two teens decide to run away together. Theres less here of the magical realism for which King is known (Everybody Sees the Ants, rev. 1/12; Ask the Passengers, rev. 1/13), but fans will recognize the authors expert skill at believably portraying a bullied, neglected, angry teen in desperate need of healing and love. As always, Kings societal critique is spot-on and scathing, this time examining the dehumanization wrought by reality television on its stars and on its viewers in order to feel better about themselves. Put down the remote and pick up Reality Boyits a showstopper. jennifer m. brabander (c) Copyright 2013. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
Seventeen-year-old Gerald became infamous at age five, when he took a dump on his family's kitchen table for the whole reality-TV viewing public to see. A network TV nanny came in to help Gerald be less of a problem child, but the cameras didn't catch what Tasha, his older sister and tormentor, was doing to him and his other sister, Lisi, or his mother's constant defense of her eldest daughter at the expense of her youngest children. And so Gerald continued to rage on. Though years of anger-management training and a boxing-gym regimen have helped him gain better control, his future still feels limited to jail or death. The narrative, though striking and often heartbreaking, is disjointed in places, namely with Gerald's grand plan to run away to the circus. However, this is still a King novel, and the hallmarks of her strong work are there: magical realism, heightened emotion, and the steady, torturous, beautiful transition into self-assured inner peace. Like Gerald, it's wonderfully broken.--Jones, Courtney Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IN A 2009 EPISODE of the television show "Wife Swap," a pudgy 7-year-old named Curtis was paired for a while with a mom from another family who emphasized good eating habits, waking up early and other affronts to 7-year-olds everywhere. Curtis's on-air retorts, including "Bacon is good for me" and "Chicken nuggets is like my family," made him a meme online, where he is still known as King Curtis. But what of the actual human child, who must now grow up in a world that knows only one thing about him? That's the fascinating premise of A.S. King's new novel "Reality Boy," narrated by 16-year-old Gerald Faust. (The last name is no coincidence, of course: This family is living out the consequences of several deals with several devils.) When Gerald was 5, he and his family took part in a show called "Network Nanny," wherein a professional nanny (who was in fact just an actress) tried to teach his family to behave properly. Gerald responds to the presence of the fake nanny and the TV crew by defecating whenever he becomes angry - in shoes, in beds, on the dining room table. And even at 5, Gerald gets angry a lot. Millions see the Crapper, as he comes to be known, but what they don't see is just how profoundly dysfunctional his family is: Gerald's oldest sister, Tasha, is a sociopath, and his mother so deeply codependent she seems incapable of stopping Tasha from literally killing Gerald and his sister Lisi. Now Gerald is in high school, serving up hot dogs and beer at a local arena at nights and on weekends. He's also in special ed classes, and still universally known as the Crapper. Lisi is very far away at college. And Tasha lives in the basement, having loud and aggressive sex with her boyfriend whenever the rest of the family tries to gather in the kitchen. Anyone who has known the walking-on-eggshells experience of living with a borderline personality will recognize Gerald's life with Tasha. The challenge here is that it's almost as difficult for readers to empathize with sociopaths as it is for sociopaths to empathize with others. For all its horror, Tasha's Iago-like villainy becomes repetitive, which both slows the story and at times makes it feel less immediate. But once Gerald connects with a co-worker, Hannah, "Reality Boy" gains momentum. Watching Gerald and Hannah fall in love is fascinating, because these are both deeply troubled kids: Gerald remains scarily angry and at times violent; he also spaces out into what he calls "Gersday," living inside his head to protect himself from the various terrors of the outside world. Hannah, meanwhile, is mercurial and unpredictable as she deals with her own family secrets. A. S. King is one of the best Y.A. writers working today. She captures the disorientation of adolescence brilliantly. Gerald, for instance, often seems to be hallucinating when in Gersday, but is he really mentally ill? Perhaps he is just transitioning away from the rich fantasy life he needed to survive his childhood. The language here is always simple and true to Gerald's experience, but "Reality Boy" is very smart in the way it goes about capturing the reality of teenage life, "when everything is possible and yet nothing ever happens." King's obsession with reality makes the novel drag in places, but it's nice to see someone subtly parody the over-the-top young adult adventure stories that dominate so-called contemporary realistic Y.A. "Reality Boy" is obsessed with real reality, and shows us - for example - what happens when you actually run away with the circus. "Reality Boy" isn't my favorite A.S. King novel. (That would be "Ask the Passengers.") But while the story sometimes feels disjointed, "Reality Boy" is much more than a simple indictment of reality TV. Yes, production companies (and parents) exploit the King Curtises of the world. And yes, we are all complicit in that exploitation. But "Reality Boy" is finally a novel about whether you are fated to the life the world expects you to have. Gerald and Hannah's courage will resonate with teenagers and inspire them, but it isn't the kind of cheaply won victory you see on television (and in too many books). It's the kind of better life that comes with strings attached, and with sacrifices, and with imperfections. In short, it's real. JOHN GREEN is the author of "Looking for Alaska," "An Abundance of Katherines," "Paper Towns" and "The Fault in Our Stars."
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-When 16-year-old Gerald was 5, his parents made a contract to appear on a reality television show where a stage nanny offered techniques to mend their beyond-repair family. Gerald was targeted as the problem child when it was actually his psychopathic sister, Tasha, who was the true menace. His parents turned a blind eye, repeatedly allowing their firstborn to torment and threaten the lives of Gerald, sister Lisi, and even the mother while the edited television broadcasts skewed the truth. At first, readers will be taken aback when they learn that little on-camera Gerald defecated on Tasha's and his mother's belongings, earning him the infamous nickname "Crapper," but they will soon realize that in his young mind it was his only weapon of defense in a desperate situation. The horror and injustice of it all follow insecure, agry Gerald into his teens. So does fearsome, unemployed Tasha when she moves into the family's basement with her boyfriend, has loud and regular sex, and is still enabled by their parents. When Gerald warily falls in love with Hannah, a schoolmate and coworker with family troubles of her own, "kidnapping" themselves by running away together seems their only recourse to wake up their parents. King's trademarks-attuned first-person narrative, convincing dialogue, realistic language, and fitting quirkiness-connect effectively in this disturbing, yet hopeful novel. Not since Norma Fox Mazer's disquieting When She Was Good (Scholastic, 1997) has an emotionally and mentally deranged sibling and dysfunctional parents wreaked such havoc on a main character who still manages to survive and grow beyond it.-Diane P. Tuccillo, Poudre River Public Library District, CO (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
"Everybody's so full of shit," declares the epigraph of this heart-pounding and heartbreaking novel, setting the tone of the narrative: cynical, disappointed and slyly funny. Gerald "the Crapper" Faust has not yet outlived the notoriety he achieved at age 5 by defecating on the kitchen table during their stint on Network Nanny, a "reality" television show that edited out most of the truth about his dysfunctional family life. Gerald has struggled to manage his anger in the 12 years since with the help of a few compassionate adults at school and work, but at its root, his rage remains unmitigated. In suspenseful flashbacks, Gerald details the damage wrought by his oldest sister, Tasha, a spoiled sociopathic despot. When he meets Hannah, a troubled beauty who sees him as he is instead of as he was, he cannot resist the possibility of genuine connection, despite the dangers. King deftly depicts the angst of first love in all its awkward, confusing glory. Even when she trots out the archetypical road-trip-as-journey-to-self-discovery, King writes with an honesty that allows Hannah and Gerald to call each other on their bullshit and ultimately arrive at an intimacy that feels neither forced nor false. This is no fairy-tale romance, but a compulsively readable portrait of two imperfect teens learning to trust each other and themselves. (Fiction. 14 up)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
