Boys of Alabama

A Novel

By: Genevieve Hudson

Narrated by: Charlie Thurston

In this bewitching debut novel, a sensitive teen, newly arrived in Alabama, falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. While his German parents don't know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives in the thick heat. Taken in by the football team, he learns how to catch a spiraling ball, how to point a gun, and how to hide his innermost secrets.

Max already expects some of the raucous behavior of his new American friends - like their insatiable hunger for the fried and cheesy and their locker-room talk about girls. But he doesn't expect the camaraderie - or how quickly he would be welcomed into their world of basement beer drinking. In his new canvas pants and thickening muscles, Max feels like he's "playing dress-up". That is until he meets Pan, the school "witch", in physics class: "Pan in his all black. Pan with his goth choker and the gel that made his hair go straight up." Suddenly, Max feels seen, and the pair embarks on a consuming relationship: Max tells Pan about his supernatural powers, and Pan tells Max about the snake-poison initiations of the local church. The boys, however, aren't sure whose past is darker and what is more frightening - their true selves or staying true in Alabama.

©2020 Genevieve Hudson (P)2020 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

Soft and Brutal

holy shit, I'm... not sure what to say about this one. it's beautifully written, the style is so impossibly soft and flowing and gentle but it's absolutely crushing when it wants to be. i love that Pan is given so many flaws and so many failings and is never described as perfect, but it's so obvious that Max very much thinks of him as such.

Full throated attack on the redneck philosophy

It was dificullt
to put down. Names were confusing
Strange
F have s good day

Great character relationships!

I liked this book. It was an overall good read with great character relationships. I think it was missing a bit of information as far as the main character and I wasn’t a fan of the ending, no closure.

Hard to care what happens

The premise of the story is far, far, far more interesting than the execution.

The main character, Max, seemingly has no motivations of his own and is completely controlled by the wants and needs of other characters. He's disassociated from the story to the point that it's kind of hard to care what happens to him. Background plot threads and characters that are way more interesting than Max are introduced throughout the story but never really lead anywhere.

The performance is also not great - and by not great, I mean he leans into every vocal stereotype of Alabama you can imagine. While I don't think it's ever made explicit, the story is set in or near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and the majority of folks in Tuscaloosa just don't speak with such exaggerated accents. The author pretty accurately captures a lot of the culture and social elements of Alabama, and Charlie Thurston then turns them into a cartoon.

I might have liked it better if I had read the book rather than listened - but here we are. It's fine - but I don't really recommend.

An arduous read

At times, very engaging, at times full of holes. The performance was exceptional, the middle part and ending were unsatisfying.