Rating: 
Summary: A sustained whisper of promise
Review: Dream Boy may have been early Jim Grimsley, but I read it after absorbing his "Comfort and Joy" and "Winter Birds": now I can see why it gained so much attention as a promising beginning novel....the subsequent "diaries" of Grimsley's characters are as stunningly mature as this little beginning novel promises.Style. Grimsley has style - his own method of finding obscure characters, making them completely believable, giving them life beyond the last page of his books. Dream Boy is a book for the widest audience, not just another good story about same sex relationships. Delivering the delicate vulnerability of discovering the joy and the terror of love and physical attraction has rarely been so well related. The magical ending, suggested by the title of the book, leaves us, the reader, to decide what really happened, much in the fashion deMaupassant stories. This is a fine little novel with a very large messsage that needs and deserves our attention.
Rating:
Summary: Gripped me from start to finish
Review: On the surface, the telling of the budding relationship between Nathan and Roy could have ended up as another gay first-love story. But this is more. This story is about the ability of love to conquer even death, the pain of sexual abuse and the strength to overcome it, the fine line between prejudice and jealousy, and the secrets that hide behind the closed doors of the "perfect" family. Best of all, the ending was a surprise, both in terms of what happens to Nathan and what doesn't. The characters are real people, not stereotypes of macho or weakling (except maybe Burke, but even he packs a few surprises.) The dreamy use of words, combined with the present tense, gives the reader an impression of a dream, yet a dream that is all too real.
Rating: 
Summary: Powerful...
Review: Two boys meet and learn about each other. But each is hiding his own darker, deeper secret. Feels like you are watching a movie--that is how well it is written. A violent climax that finally explains everything is perfect, but the following few chapters seem like Jim Grimsley was not sure where to go with it. The ending is a cheat, but everything else is worth your time. Do not skip over this book. (I can't wait to read the other books I ordered by Grimsley.)
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful Story
Review: I was so intrigued with the relationship of these two boys. It is passionate, hurtful, warm, and in the end brutal. The frsutarting thing for me was the ending. I wasn't sure if it was suppossed to be a dream or if it was real. I felt abit cheated and confused at the end. But I still recommend it none-the-less.
Rating:
Summary: My childhood relived in one transcontinental flight
Review: I purchased this book in time for a flight from LA to Miami. I did not know anything of it prior to reading the first page but, instantly the language and setting rang true to me in a very deep way. As the story tenderly unfolded, my childhood in North Carolina came flooding back to me with every mention of place and person. I found in my memory a site to fit every description and an emotion to match all those evoked. As my flight continued, I found in this book the power to transport me across the country faster than the 767 and to a place not serviced by American Airlines. I was in high school again and living in my hometown of 500 people. As my plane made its final descent into Miami I finished the novel and cried as I left the plane and airport filled with nostagia and regret. I would highly recommend this book to anyone despite my very personal connection to it. The language and plot render it a truly Southern novel, with ties to Welty, filled with a beautiful peacefullness that overwhelms the evil exsisting so close. I wish I had been able to read about a love story like this when I was 16. Instead, I merely tried to live it.
Rating: 
Summary: One doesn't return a gift...
Review: This book was a gift from a friend who thought I'd like it. And I appreciated the thought. In a way, I did like it. There were heart-wrenching moments and a nifty ending, but I just can't stand wading through the endlessness of the never-ending present-tense. Even in real life one does not live in the present tense. To me, this literary device, posing as great literature, is becoming all too common among gay writers. I'll be glad when writing an entire story in present tense is old hat and goes away.
Rating:
Summary: Smashing Work by Jim Grimsley
Review: After reading the first few pages of this book, I was hooked. I could not put the book down at all. Roy and Nathan's blooming love for each other is sweet and refreshing. The only problem with the book is that it will leave you wanting more.
Rating:
Summary: Southern Gothic
Review: The third novel by Atlanta writer Jim Grimsley tells the story of to adolescent boys coming to understand and accept their love for one another. Each boy does so at great personal risk. In this sense, Dream Boy is not a new love story in the realm of queer fiction. However, the novel is compelling for two reasons: love story between Nathan and Roy rings true, and the clear juxtaposition of their love with the world from which they emerge is equally persuasive. Though the book is a bit slow in the middle, the romance between the two and the rush of their interest is well realized. Nathan, in order to love Roy, has to separate his love for Roy and his sexual attraction to him from the continued abuse he suffers at the hands of his father. Grimsley clearly--and sometimes painfully--shows how Nathan remains faithful to his feelings for Roy; he measures his love for the other boy great enough to accept it. Occasionally hampered by overwriting, Dream Boy's premise is realized only in the last chapter, when the gothic backdrop of the story is brought into the foreground.
Rating:
Summary: as effective a metaphor as one could hope for
Review: i'll start with the literary merits of this book: wow! grimsley manages to maintain a tone thru 190 pages, and that cannot be easy. the whole book is one rhapsodic series of connected images, and his use of foreshadowing astounds. as to the erotic quality of the book, how dare he imply that a 15 year old boi can be sexually active! the intense honesty of that revelation is so refreshing, and it is wonderful to have read a coming of age gay novel that plays it honest. i really don't understand the complaints of some people here about the ending; it is a perfect fit for the rest of the book. i will be reaqding more of mr. grimsley's books, and i look forward to the film version of this one. now for the casting ...
Rating:
Summary: Razor-sharp and brutal story
Review: As with Winter Birds, I read this book in one sitting and was quite agitated when disturbed- a good indicator of how engrossing the narrative is. Too often the standard models of love between young boys besiege us in modern representations of gay youth: a weak, confused misfit clamoring for the attention of a stronger, ostensibly better-placed peer. Of course, as with any John Hughes-esque tale of unrequited devotion, the weakling ultimately triumphs over the mentor in these books. This particular book rethinks that model and Nathan, the younger and physically "weaker" of the two, emerges from the beginning as the emotional and mental superior. The fact that he, unlike his "mentor", is entirely conscious of the ruinous passion that he actively pursues (and of its ensuing consequences) is ultimately a sign of his intelligence and desire to overcome the factors impeding his happiness. More disturbing, however, is the source of his experience: sexual abuse by his father. The parallels (sometimes overbearing and overstated) between lover and parent seem to indicate the novel's climax is engendered more by the father's treatment of Nathan more than by the violence of prejudice and jealousy. In this sense, the book paints a hopeful picture of an otherwise impossible love amidst the ruins of run-down, trashy Middle America. In sum, the eerily lucid construction of the physical and sentimental facets of Nathan and Roy's love further dispels the (relatively) common belief that gay men pursue only physical pleasure in their relationships. That Nathan and Roy's love surmounts the squalor of their surroundings universalizes what I gather is the remarkably simple theme of this multi-layered and important book: to be "whole", as Nathan is at the novel's end, is to be loved.
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