An autobiographical novel about growing up gay in a working-class town in Picardy. "Every morning in the bathroom I would repeat the same phrase to myself over and over again. Today I'm really gonna be a tough guy". It is a great quote capturing perhaps what gripped me most about this book, i.e. the exploration of masculinity from an outsider/insider. The book is relentless, the bullying scenes really unpleasant to read, as are the ones where [SPOILER] the protagonist's 14 year old cousins semi-consensually penetrates Eddie, aged 8 or 9. At times, the descriptions of violence and abjection are so dramatic that I felt my trust in the narrator fade, just as the sense of guilt for disbelieving kicked in. Besides the level of drama, Tascha also pointed at some inconsistencies and repetitions that made the account less convincing. Does it matter? (genuine question) I think in this case it does, because it is such a terrible - though sympathetic - portrait of a region and a social class, that honesty seems important. Either way, the gripping part for me wasn't so much the account of chronic homophobia, poverty and generalised violence, but really the exploration of what it takes to make a man in the eyes of a particular kind of men. Whatever was the author's "real" experience, his observations about gender - and its shaping through class - are insightful, more than the other (mostly American) growing-up-gay-in-a-conservative-environment memoirs I have read.