Hommeboys by Blair Mastbaum
Part biography, part novel, Hommeboys is the story of Sam, a simple guy from Ohio who is plunged in the glittering modeling world of New York City, only to discover the glitter is fake, and that he will be basically very, very alone.
I really enjoyed this story since I could recognize most of the characters in it; now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying these are real people and I linked them to their names, but that they are stereotype of real person, and for many of them you can connect someone. There is Sam, who is doing the model since he doesn’t know nothing else, but you can say he is not fated to be a “name”; Sam is cute, but he is like hundreds of other boys, and they eat them in one year top. There is Darren, Sam’s first friend in this new world, someone Sam could love, but Darren is damned. There are the owners of the model agencies, the stylists, the photographers, the supermodels and the background. All of them feel so real and consequently so fake: nothing in this world is solid enough for Sam to cling to, and he is like a guy who is drowning.
It’s scaring to think that Blair Mastbaum used his own experience to write this story, because then it means he was there, and probably what Sam is experiencing, is what Blair did. Scaring and elating indeed, because now we know that Mastbaum’s did the right thing, lived that world for a bit and then walked away, towards what was his real, true life. Modeling was like a temporary madness, something you need to learn how to survive to and walk away alive. But I remember some of Mastbaum’s posts, listing the ones who didn’t manage to survive.
Hommeboys is pretty on the surface and gritty behind the cover, but I think many will identify reading it; it’s also really “light” in the writing style, so much that it goes down smoothly, without any stop in the reading, easy like taking and jump and emerging again… a jump into hell and back.
Amazon Kindle: Hommeboys
Publisher: MERC Books (December 9, 2012)
Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading list&view=elisa.rolle
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