Ponyboy (Eliot Duncan) – I'm a sucker for atmospheric prose, and Ponyboy seemed to give prose that echoed the protagonist's own chaotic, drug scrambled perception of his world in Paris and Berlin. It can make it a confusing read at times, but I felt that very much kept you inside Ponyboy's head as he gets trapped in his cycle of drugs, booze and godawful relationship choices.
For as much as I enjoyed that, I felt it was lacking enough threads in the final act to tie the themes together. On it's own, it's strong. But set against a large number of tragic and self destructive queer stories, it was hard to see this standing out and offering something beyond a final movement past hopelessness and into recovery. In many ways, that mirrors stories that stem from the personal. But for a story that can be so evocative, I felt it had more to give in this current climate than what was said on the page.
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