Ponyboy: A Novel Paperback – June 13, 2023 by Eliot Duncan (Author)
$16.95

Ponyboy

Brand: W. W. Norton & Company
Current Stock:
UPC: 9781324051220
Gift Wrapping: Gift Wrapping Available
Authors: Eliot Duncan
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Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company (June 13, 2023)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1324051221
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1324051220
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches

 

An evocative debut novel of trans-masculinity, addiction, and the pain and joy of becoming.

In the first of three acts, Ponyboy’s titular narrator―a pill-popping, speed-snorting trans-masculine lightning bolt―unravels in his Paris apartment. Ponyboy is caught in a messy love triangle with Baby, a lesbian painter who can’t see herself being with someone trans, and Toni, a childhood friend who can actually see Ponyboy for who he is. Strung out, Ponyboy follows Baby to Berlin in act two, where he sinks deeper into drugs and falls for Gabriel, all the while pursued by a megalomaniacal photographer hungry for the next hot thing. As Ponyboy’s relationships crumble, he overdoses and find himself alone in his childhood home in Iowa. The novel’s final act follows Ponyboy to rehab, exploring the ways in which trans identity, addiction, and recovery reforge the bond between mother and child. Eliot Duncan reveals, in precise atmospheric prose reminiscent of Anne Carson and Allen Ginsberg, the innate splendor, joy, and ache of becoming oneself.

 

Review

"Eliot Duncan's melancholic transboy swagger sparkles in this classic story of a dissolute bookish Midwesterner who crashes through Europe, falling in and out of love, in and out of despair, adventuring through the nights, and stargazing from the gutter. An astonishing first novel."
― Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

"A vivid portrayal of the lure of self-abandonment. Duncan shows us what’s found in pursuit of it―and what’s left in its wake."
― Hil Malatino, author of Side Affects: On Being Trans and Feeling Bad

"Ponyboy reads like one of those unforgettable nights in your twenties. Duncan captures the optimism that accompanies the allure of Paris, the high of substances, and the sense that anything can happen when the sun falls; and he transmogrifies the fear that the worst will happen into the small redemptions that are, in the end, all any of us can hope for. Read this book to relive the hazy hours that you lost to memory and to remember the hope that, no matter how bad the hangover will be, the best is yet to come."
― Elias Rodriques, author of All the Water I've Seen Is Running

"Ponyboy is a novel about self-immolation and rising from your own ashes with a spent match between your teeth. It’s also one of the best books I’ve read about expat dirtbaggery, and ferociously portrays the velvety allure of oblivion and the terror, eroticism, and bright urgency of coming home to yourself."
― Rebecca Rukeyser, author of The Seaplane on Final Descent

"[Duncan’s] Ponyboy grows increasingly empathetic, while his sometimes melancholy story, like his habit, in the end proves to be addictive. A first novelist to watch very closely."
― Michael Cart, Booklist (starred review)

"A troubled protagonist deals with addiction and his own becoming in this expressive, semiautobiographical bildungsroman…[Duncan] allows his protagonist to emerge as real and true―and alive."
― Kirkus

About the Author

Eliot Duncan is a US-born writer and artist. He is the cofounder of the international queer collective Slanted House and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He lives in London.