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A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from her Student
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$ 17.56
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| Retail Value |
$ 19.95 |
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$ 2.39 (12%) |
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| Item Number |
502313 |
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Item Description...
Product Description
One morning, a box was delivered to Elizabeth Stone's door. It held ten years of personal diaries and a letter that began "Dear Elizabeth, You must be wondering why I left you my diaries in my will. After all, we have not seen each other in over twenty years . . ." What followed was a remarkable year in Elizabeth's life as she read Vincent's diaries and began to learn about the high school student she had taught twenty-five years before. A BOY I ONCE KNEW is the story of the man that Vincent had become-and the efforts of his teacher to make some sense of his life. With his diaries, Vincent becomes a constant presence in her household. She follows his daily life in San Francisco and his travels abroad. She watches him deal with the deaths of friends in the gay community. She judges him. She gets angry with him. She develops affection and compassion for him. In some ways she brings him back to life. And in doing so, she becomes the student, and Vincent the teacher. He forces her to examine her life as well as his. He challenges her feelings and fears about death. He proves to her that relationships between two people can deepen even after one of them is gone. A BOY I ONCE KNEW is a powerful book about loss, memory, and the ways in which we belong to each other. This is a revealing, moving, and wholly unexpected book.
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Item Specifications...
Pages 208
Dimensions: Length: 7.36" Width: 5.4" Height: 0.83"
Weight: 0.67 lbs.
Binding Hardcover
Release Date May 17, 2002
ISBN 1565123158
EAN 9781565123151
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Availability 3 units.
Availability accurate as of May 24, 2012 03:59.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | A Wonderful re-working of a tired genera Dec 1, 2004 |
Stone was given a task that was impossible to do: being asked to reconstruct a life and a story in a way that would both please Vincent and be worth writing. Granted, Vincent's life was tragic, but is not a story worth repeating. It is not new tale: a troubled gay youth struggling to fit in, finding refuge in a gay metropolis, and ultimately dieing of AIDS.
What is much more interesting is Stone's story. What a remarkable situation to be in: Having to write the story of a former student who has since grown estranged; to see her very human reaction to Victor's sad story. Untimely it is much more compelling and thought provoking that the story given her.
Stone is an expert of narratives (as per her other book and work.) I think she could see the limits of Victor's tale; which would make for a very unremarkable and unoriginal work. Instead we see how she reacted, and we in turn can react likewise. Tragedy for Stone is not in the grand narrative, but in all the subsequent and supporting narratives.
In the tired genera of AIDS-memoir Stone has breathed new life into it. Vincent is surly pleased. | | |  | A Boy I Could Use as an Excuse to Write my Autobiography Oct 11, 2003 |
| What a tremendous letdown! I picked this up because I loved the thought of the ex-teacher revealing the life of a former student through his memoirs and her memories. Too bad that isn't really the book. Elizabeth Stone uses Vincent as an excuse to write her own autobiography- and believe me, her story makes you long to hear Vincent's all the more. Perhaps his diaries were very vague or his family reticent of having his life detailed - both understandable. But, given that, there isnlt really a worthwhile project here. I got so bored that I kept skipping pages looking to find Vincent's story and all I really kept finding was hers. Ugh! A vanity project all around. | | | | About A Boy We'll Never Know... May 19, 2003 |
| Upon completing this book (and before reading the reviews of others on this site), I came out with many of the same feelings that they had: this book was NOT so much about the "Boy" but about the author. I'm glad to see that I wasn't the only one disappointed and misled by the book and its summary. I wanted to know more about the supposed title character...not about the author. The author left his diaries and notes to a total stranger so she could tell the world about him...about his battle with life...and death. And yet all she was concerned about was her own life. What a disappointment. I'm sure she gained something from reading his diaries, but we certainly didn't. And when she did mention him, she used quotes from his diaries that were quick notes like, "Went shopping. Met with friend." Nothing in detail. A true author who wanted to share Vincent with the world would have cut beyond his quick notes and written something with more depth, using his notes as a guide. Ms. Stone didn't seem to even "get" Vincent...or the gay lifestyle. So, after reading the book, I quickly resold it online. It wasn't a keeper for me. Sorry, Vincent...I hope someone else preserves memories of you... | | |  | a boy i once knew.... Jan 17, 2003 |
A large brown box appears on the doorstep of teacher, Elizabeth Stone's front door. Inside she would find the journals and inner workings of former student, former human being, former AIDS patient; Vincent.
This book was extremely slow going. I felt that it asked too may questions and sort of implied the story rather than to tell it. Yes I am aware that Miss. Stone only had the journals as a reference yet I still believe this work could have been executed in a way as to end up with a much more impressive piece of writing.
In reading "A Boy I Once Knew," I also came across a variety of typos and errors thus proving the type of effort that went into the book.
Stone also seemed to focus much more on her life than Vincent's, the one she meant to be preserved.
When I look at this book as a whole I can't help but wonder if Vincent was made into the person he wanted the world to know. But, at the same time, I don't know if we were properly "introduced". | | |  | A Good Read, But Not What I was Expecting Oct 12, 2002 |
| A Boy I Once Knew is a bit of a miss-titled novel. Although the book is an interesting read, I was expecting a book about the title character and his life journey from the time he was a student to the time he died. Instead, the book focuses primarily on the author who draws parallels between what is happening in the Journals to what is happening in her own life. While sometimes interesting. In that sense it was disappointing, leaving me to wonder about the diaries and what I didn't learn. A more apt title for this book might have been, The Diaries I Received From A Student And How They Made Me Reflect On My Own Life. | | | Write your own review about A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from her Student
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