Choir Boy

By Charlie Jane Anders

As his home life deteriorates, twelve-year-old Berry decides to remain a choir boy forever and, after trying to perform surgery on himself, obtains testosterone-inhibiting drugs from a clinic, leading to huge, unexpected consequences.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932360816
• ISBN13: 9781932360813
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Soft Skull Press
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.98 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.0" x 5.8"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 8 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

I love this book so much I could die

I don't want to give this book 5 stars, I want to give it a million stars. I want to give it every star in the firmament. This is a book that refuses to stay in its box, about a kid who refuses to stay put in his box, in her box, in anybody's box. I'm going to call it a transgender coming-of-age novel just to give you an idea of what you're getting into, but believe me, this book explodes its genre constraints just as forcefully as the narrator explodes his gender constraints. I'm totally in love with this book.

Growing up Trans

Within the last year two titles have appeared that provide two very different approaches to discussion of the issue of transgender teenagers. Luna by Julie Anne Peters appeared in 2004 and was an Honor Book for the American Library Association GLBT Round Table's Stonewall Award in literature this past year. Luna is the brother of story's narrator, Regan. Regan's days and nights have revolved around Luna and now Regan is facing up to the fact that she has no life of her own and is becoming resentful. Choir Boy takes completely different tact. Berry is thirteen years old and loves being in the choir at St. Luke's Episcopal Church. He loves the music and the atmosphere so much that he realizes he wants to remain a choirboy into adulthood. He does not want to change, to lose his magnificent voice after training for 8 years. So Berry does what any confused, scared, male might do in a comic setting. He gets himself to a clinic and quickly begins taking hormones and testosterone blockers. He just hadn't figured that breasts were part of the deal! Choir Boy is a romp through a confused teenager's life. Berry's exploration, accidental or otherwise, of gender issues is laughingly real. Living half his life in the choir and the other half hiding in his room from his parents, Berry is, to say the least, naïve. Berry stumbles through life seemingly unawares of the steps he is taking until he completes them. It is a state of confusion and uncertainty that I remember well as a teenager, and I am sure exists today for many young adults. The book contains some basic exploratory sex scenes though nothing that hasn't been written about in other teen books. There is some action that make the title suitable only for high school or older kids, though these scenes are handled well and realistically by the author. Choir Boy is focused on Berry. Berry displays all his inner workings for us to see and they are not always pretty or complete. Berry places himself out for the world to watch and the reader has a seat for the entertainment that follows. Not all adults will like Choir Boy simply because they believe teens should face emotional issues seriously and antiseptically. But I believe many teens will appreciate author Anders' honest approach to what Berry is going through. Teenage life is not always well thought through and the results are not always sensible and serious. Unlike the review in School Library Journal would have you believe, this title is definitely a must for high school and public libraries because it provides another view of growing up with trans issues on your mind.

Running With Transsexuals

CHOIR BOY owes, perhaps, more than a little to Augusten Burroughs’ Running With Scissors. Each is the story of a smart, self-sufficient kid living in a whacked-out world with abusively neglectful parents, a loopy psychiatrist, and plenty of statutory sex. Both books have a tone of dry, black humor as well. Of course, Burroughs insists his work is non-fiction, while Charlie Anders’s is imaginary. One questions the journalistic accuracy of Burroughs (to start with, he cops to fictionalizing names), and I am conversely driven to wonder how much of CHOIR BOY reflects the author’s actual childhood. Although the novel comes with a liberal amount of kink, the innocent, pure sex is more exciting—a kid’s first kiss, the first time he gets to second base, a young boy’s first brassiere. The stuff with transsexuals, cross-dressing, prostitution, and a bottle of Viagra that causes serious mischief is pretty ho-hum, just as it is in the real world if those things don’t happen to be your particular cup of tea; ho-hum as they would be to a prepubescent kid. As a post-operative transsexual woman myself, I can attest to the accuracy of the transgender aspects of the book. And, having had the pleasure of meeting Charlie Anders several times in some most interesting venues, I can understand how it is she knows all about it. In a way, CHOIR BOY can be read as an overblown force-femme fantasy, but it is much more than that. It’s the Peter Pan story of a boy who doesn’t want to grow up, updated for the twenty-first century. It’s a coming-of-age story. It’s a story about the struggle to find and create our authentic selves, despite the external, conflicting pressures to be what everyone else wants us to be.

Wonderful!

I loved this book. I read it almost a month ago and I find myself still thinking about Berry's world. Sad, funny, achingly touching like adolescence itself, it's really not easy to describe. Berry is a twelve year old who is on the verge of everything: a new voice, body, thoughts, feelings, friends, social standing, family; every inch of Berry is starting to change. Author Charlie Anders has done a wonderful job of bringing the reader back to that time, when everything and nothing about life was simple. I look forward to reading it again!

No easy answers

Choir Boy compares well with classic books about teenagers that aren't necessarily for teenagers, like Bridge Over Terabithia or Carson McCullers' Member of the Wedding, and then goes way beyond. It's a fast-moving and complicated story, lyrical and musically structured, scary, hilarious, and hopeful. Everyone will read it to be "about" gender and queerness, and it is, but I hope people will also see another story, about the possibility of living in uncertainty. Berry and the other characters have outside influences pushing them into particular paths of identity or behavior, but none of them ultimately are locked in to those paths. Commitment to art, above all, is what puts Berry in conflict with society. I listened to cds of choir boys singing anthems while reading the book, and let the philosophical and religious questions percolate. In short, there is no genre this book fits. It might be read by transgender teenagers as a sort of equivalent to the "difficult issue" young adult book, something that goes beyond Avi, or Betty Miles: books where a kid stands up for some issue like sex education or not saying the Pledge of Allegiance, without understanding that it's going to create a hell of a firestorm beyond their control. But the book's depths put it way beyond that Scholastic Paperback "emperor has no clothes" simplification of what it's like to be a kid, and far beyond the didactic messages of the usual coming-out memoir. Choir Boy is deeply respectful of kids. Reading it made me look back at my own teenage years and the choices I made, and re-evaluate the meaning of some of my own actions. It's a fun book and a great story!