About the Book
"An imaginative and honest epic, weaving together biblical stories, fantasy, poetry, and fairy tales with a touch of realism . . . Allen asks us to question the assumptions, -isms, and contradictions of the modern world . . . Recalling the humanitarian concerns of Octavia Butler's Fledgling and the poetry of Ovid's Metamorphosis, this book will appeal to readers of literary fiction and fantasy." --Library Journal
A riveting, poignant satire of societal ills, with an added dose of fantasy, Every Boy Should Have a Man takes place in a post-human world where creatures called oafs keep humanlike "mans" as beloved pets. One day, a poor boy oaf brings home a man whom he hides under his bed in the hopes his parents won't find out. When the man is discovered, the boy admits it is not his--but the boy is no delinquent. Despite the accusations being hurled at him, he's telling the truth when he says he found the man aimlessly wandering in the bramble. Nevertheless, he must return the man to his rightful owner. But when the heartbroken boy comes home from school one afternoon, he finds wrapped up in red ribbon a female man with a note around her neck: Every boy should have a man. You're a fine son. Love, Dad.
Thus begins Every Boy Should Have a Man, Preston L. Allen's picaresque journey into uncharted territory in earth, sky, and firmament. With echoes of Margaret Atwood and Jack and the Beanstalk, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Octavia Butler's Kindred, it traces the story of the boy and his three "mans," Brown Skin who is not his, the tragic Red Sleeves who has no voice, and her quick-witted daughter Red Locks whose epic journey takes her from the backbreaking drudgery of the mines to the perils of the battlefield to the savagery of cannibalism.
Oafs and mans each gain insight and understanding into one another's worlds, and the worlds that touch theirs--ultimately showing that oafs and mans alike share a common "humanity." Filled with surprising twists and turns, the novel is in part a morality tale that takes on many of today's issues including poverty, the environment, sexism, racism, war, and religion, all in lighthearted King James prose.
About the Author :
Preston L. Allen is a recipient of a State of Florida Individual Artist Fellowship and a winner of the Sonja H. Stone Prize in Fiction. He is the author of Jesus Boy, the critically-acclaimed novel All or Nothing, and the award-winning collection Churchboys and Other Sinners. His stories have appeared in numerous magazines and journals and have been anthologized in Brown Sugar and other publications. He teaches writing in south Florida.
Review :
Every Boy Should Have a Man is a wild animal, a melancholy human, a hybrid with fangs and tears, a book that cannot be classified and should never be classified--it is a book that I read until late into the night, and then talked about with my daughters, my dog, my friends, and myself. I won't ever look at the daughters, the dog, or the world, in quite the same way.--Susan Straight, author of Between Heaven and Here
Allen...throws caution to the wind with his bizarre but exquisitely composed fable that uses transhumanism as the prism to reflect on the nature of humanity...It's also intellectually curious and rather cutting in many of its conceptual and cultural assessments. It's a world where man is not only pet, but also meat, where religion, wars and empires are just as backward as they are in our own world, and where worlds collide with a temperamental angst that is as uncomfortable as it is alluring. Much like Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel Planet of the Apes, this novel is a sardonic parable on the nature and destiny of the species. A nimble fable whose bold narrative experiment is elevated by its near-biblical language and affectionate embrace of our inherent flaws.-- "Kirkus Reviews"
Imaginative, versatile, and daring Allen (Jesus Boy, 2010) raids the realms of myth and fairy tales in this topsy-turvy speculative fable . . . With canny improvisations on 'Jack and the Beanstalk, ' the 'Epic of Gilgamesh, ' and Alice in Wonderland, Allen sharpens our perceptions of class divides, racism, enslavement, and abrupt and devastating climate change to create a delectably adventurous, wily, funny, and wise cautionary parable.-- "Booklist"
In Every Boy Should Have a Man, Allen takes genre bending into unexplored territory. He has crafted a highly imaginative, unsettling work of social satire that . . . utilizes a speculative fable as a way to muse on race, slavery, civil rights and even climate change. . . Every Boy Should Have a Man is James Baldwin meets Aldous Huxley, a twisted contortion of a weird fairy tale future gone wrong, all told from high atop the mountain in a sort of New Testament prose. As the mixologist of this mad and unpredictable genre tableau, Allen has navigated into wholly uncharted territory. He comments on everything from slave ownership to pet ownership to the way we treat our planet and ourselves. His novel is ambitious yet understated, cautionary while rarely politically preachy. Every Boy Should Have a Man is that rare novel that is derived from such a disparate scope of literary influences that it waxes entirely original.-- "Chicago Tribune"
