The World of Normal Boys

A Novel

By: K.M. Soehnlein

Narrated by: Blake Kevin Dwyer

Length: 12 hrs and 47 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the Lambda Literary Award

"This first novel is so eloquent because it is hellbent on collaring the reader and telling him or her the whole passionate story." (Edmund White, author of Our Young Man)

"This is a rich and unflinching book." (The New York Times Book Review)

"Extraordinary...an exhilarating experience...that Soehnlein has produced as his first novel a work of such maturity and excellence is little short of astounding." (Fenton Johnson, author of Scissors, Paper, Rock)

The time is the late 1970s—an age of gas shortages, head shops, and Saturday Night Fever. The place, suburban New Jersey. At a time when the teenagers around him are coming of age, Robin MacKenzie is coming undone. While "normal boys" are into cars, sports, and bullying their classmates, Robin enjoys day trips to New York City with his elegant mother, spinning fantastic tales for her amusement in an intimate ritual he has come to love. He dutifully plays the role of the good son for his meat-and-potatoes father, even as his own mind is a jumble of sexual confusion and painful self-doubt. But everything changes in one, horrifying instant when a tragic accident wakes his family from their middle-American dream and plunges them into a spiral of slow destruction.

As his family falls apart day by day, Robin finds himself pulling away from the unquestioned, unexamined life that has been carefully laid out for him. Small acts of rebellion lead to larger questions of what it means to stand on his own. Falling into a fevered triangle with two other outcasts, Todd Spicer and Scott Schatz, Robin embarks on an explosive odyssey of sexual self-discovery that will take him beyond the spring-green lawns of suburbia, beyond the fraying fabric barely holding together his quickly unraveling family, and into a complex future, beyond the world of normal boys.

"Karl Soehnlein's stunning first novel reads like a cross between the film American Beauty and Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story." (The Advocate)

"The World of Normal Boys is a work of authenticity, as relevant to those who lived a similar coming-of-age experience many years ago as it will be to those who are living that experience now." (Bay Area Reporter)

"An amusingly detailed and largely accurate picture of life in the Jersey 'burbs." (Publishers Weekly)

"Full of tension and suspense, Soehnlein's well-paced debut novel is a fresh look at one boy's sexual awakening in the 1970s and his journey to find a place where he can fit it." (Booklist)

©2000 K.M. Soehnlein (P)2023 Audible, Inc.

Understated and effective performance

I liked the book very much. A very well-conceived and written story. The narration was interesting. Not a lot of drama in his voice which I decided I appreciated. It made moments of intensity all the more powerful. A book I recently read, My Love Story, by Tina Turner, was narrated by someone who loaded each sentence with dialed up drama. It was ridiculous. So it was a pleasure to have a story read more simply with emphasis in just the right places. As you can see, I have given it five stars across the board.

Sweet but maybe a little too sexy

There were parts of this that I loved, but I also thought the focus on the sex life of thirteen year old Robin was a little skeevy. I had sex for the first time at barely sixteen, and I think I was a little ahead of most of my peers (this was in the mid 80s, just a little later than the book is set). Robin also often has a kind of world weariness that seemed ahead of his years, although his moments of confusion and acting out are very authentic.

Soehnlein has a great sense of family dynamics, and there are some lovely vivid moments.

The narration is just okay. The reader does a good job with dialogue but often settles into a kind of robotic cadence.

Sad and Amazing

The sexual details of such a young boy were uncomfortable but I was for sure that little boy at that age doing even worse and putting myself in bad situations. I felt sorry for him because it felt like he was constantly being used. He was clearly more emotionally mature than Scott but still, it felt like everyone just used him. Fantastic book! I really enjoyed it. I'd love to see what happens to the parents and even Robin.

Incredible!

Wow, what a powerful debut novel. I lived through that period. While my experiences widely differ from those of the protagonist, Robin, the book was accurate in describing the mixed-signals that gay teens sent in that era and their struggle for normalcy. The book is grounded in a moment of time and feels timeless, universal even. This is powerful writing that made me want to cheer or cry. I highly recommend it.

Searching for his voice

The character of Robin was very interesting to me … as a gay boy there were certainly similarities… but his ability to be “pushed around” seemed sometimes frustrating .., why didn’t he and Ruby tell the truth about the bullying… it would have made a huge difference … it was very interesting how he searched for his VOICE in such confused ways … I wonder what his life became … his mess of a mother and a father who was afraid of him … maybe a sequel ???

Excellent.

Finally a realistic coming of age story. Not watered down PG nonsense. Captures the feelings and frustrations of a young gay teen.

This story rings true!!!

I loved this wonderful, well written, greatly performed story!!! This story may be a fictional novel but it sure rings True!!!

Stunning, entrancing, haunting

The honesty of this story is gut-wrenching. As a “not normal” boy, I can attest to the authenticity of the confusion, mis-read signals, darkly tempting world and distinct loneliness of the Robins furiously working to have things make sense but coming up short. This is a tragic parable of the coming-of-age of a “not normal” boy. It is certainly not the only truth, but it is one.