[.ca] Boys and Girls Together (ISBN 0345439732)

On...and on....and ON...:
This book lies halfway completed on my friend's dresser. I can't bear to pick it up again. It starts out fairly interesting, with lots of quirky characters and intriguing plot lines. That's for the first 300 pages. That, in my opinion, could have been the whole book. However, it continues for over 400 more pages, with the same people, getting more and more complicated with each turn of the page. To be honest, I simply got lost. I couldn't remember who dated whom, who hated whom, and who...Oh, forget it. Now, I read books, I read lots of books...And I got lost. I gave up, around page 450. But, I tend to read books that have a few base characters whose lives are built upon chapter by chapter. This book does that, tenfold. If you think you can keep up and stay interested, go for it. It IS well written and interesting, it just seemed like I'd have to start taking notes as I read. No, thank you.

The Reason I'm a Writer Today:
I looked at it, pondered over it, it seemed to call my name. At fifteen years old, in that old Woolworth building in South Mississippi, about 1965, I put in it my hands and had to have it. I knew I had to write when I read that "Aaron's eyes burned" because he read so much. I was a girl, he was a boy, a homosexual boy, but I understood him. I knew him. I also decided to become a writer of books someday, and now I am. Thank you Mr. Goldman for the very best book I've ever read. I'm buying copies for the sensitive people I love. Thank God it's in print again. Susan Arnett

Steinbeck and Hemingway, move over:
Boys and Girls Together is one of the masterpieces of twentieth century American Literature, ranking alongside Gone With The Wind and To Kill a Mockingbird. So why has it never been made into a movie? Surely the screenplay writer of Butch and Sundance has the connections to get his own book filmed? Admittedly, the ending is too downbeat for modern filmgoers. But that could be changed without compromising the author's integrity. The fate of Aaron and Rudy must not be changed. But the insertion of happy endings for Jenny, Branch and Walt is surely permissible, if the alternative is no film at all? How about it, Mr Goldman? The book's reprinting in a 2000 paperback proves that there is still a market for incomparable storytelling. Go for it. For anyone who has not yet read it: Do so.

Interesting book, but...:
The book was quite interesting, and kept my attention all the way through. It has some of the best dialogue I've read in a long time. The problem with it is that most of the characters are morally bankrupt jerks. The two likeable people in the story, Rudy and his grandfather, are hardly even in it. The rest of the people are really hard to care about. Aaron, Rudy's parents, Branch and his mother, Jenny and Charley, and even Walt are all portrayed as either cruel and manipulative, whiny and spoiled, or weak and masochistic. You really just don't care when something bad happens to them because they don't deserve to have anything GOOD happen. But, a lot of books are like that, so if you want is a well written novel that keeps your interest, this is definitely one of those. If you're looking for a novel with characters you'll identify with and care about, look elsewhere.

Didn't read past page 725:
I picked up this book since it was discounted and by William Goldman (Princess Bride being a favorite book and movie), so it was on a whim... I thought it looked interesting with lots of dialogue between characters - which is a style that I usually like. Until I started reading it and realized that this book was ONLY dialogue and that was used as much as a crutch than to tell a real story. All the characters are grating and annoying and the dialogue is contrived. So when I finally got to page 725 of page 751 I just stopped the insanity and decided to quit then and there since the extra 20 minutes seemed better spent elsewhere than reading about these characters. There is better out there.