I’m not always able to read with the kind of indestructible wholeheartedness that I used to when I was a teenager. It’s more difficult to summon that kind of immersion now, the kind that’s unburdened by distraction or responsibility, when there was nowhere else to be, and nothing else to do. But the experience of reading Fíona Scarlett’s novel ‘Boys Don’t Cry’ reminded me of a time in my own life when the pleasure of reading felt new, intense and bright, bringing me into a world that felt as real to me as my own.
Written in two time frames, it's about Joe - now in a state of great loss and grief - and Finn, only twelve, but facing the terribleness of his own terminal illness. These boys and the cast of characters around them are so believable and so well-drawn that I’m still dreaming about them all.
There are so many themes packed into the novel – the relentlessness of disadvantage, the obliviousness of privilege, the need for very sick children not to be defined by their illness, the impact of this kind of illness on a family, the huge power that medical specialists hold without always realising it.
The subject matter might make it sound like a harrowing read but it really is not. There’s humour and courage and beauty and love coursing through this beautiful book. It made me cry a lot, but it also filled me with hope. We all experience terrible losses in our lives. This book made me rage at the unfairness and randomness of life cut short by illness but it reminded me, for those left behind, that loss can be borne, that the loved ones ‘come bursting through, refusing to be forgotten or ignored,'; that the vividness of them remains, which is a soothing, magical, wonderful thing to remember.
Sarah Moore Fitzgerald