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One Of The Boys - Daniel Magariel (Trailer)

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Made By Will Eui-Il Jung & Patrick Kiszka Song : Ophelia by Luminators (Instrumental)

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Overall, I immensely enjoyed reading One of the Boys. At times it was hard to register because of the terrifying images it created in my mind; however, it candidly described the reality of this fictional situation and made me feel sympathy for the two brothers and root for them in the end. My favorite part would have to be when the narrator and brother were dropping their father off at the airport and were planning on fleeing back to Kansas that night. During this scene, the narrator gains the confidence to stand beside his brother, choosing him over his dad for the first time. His thoughts race at this moment, completely realizing that this might be the last time he sees or talks to his dad, which was heartbreaking to read. I do not have a least favorite part, for even the hard-to-read violent scenes hold meaning and raw emotion from the narrator (and one of my favorite quotes). I would definitely recommend this novel to everyone who has a tissue box handy and isn't afraid to get personal. The text is extremely relatable, direct, and emotional. Although this novel is short, it is dark, thought provoking, and definitely worth the read.

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Throughout the novel, the father brings up the same story multiple times. For example, he initially mentions that having kids was his idea, saying, "It was my idea to have both of you, you know?'" (Magariel 50). The father's sobriety is shown here, and he is able to calmly distinguish his love for both sons. Then later, after his addiction  altered his personality, and he became violent, he tells the narrator, his favorite son, "'You were my decision... [Your brother] wasn't planned like you. To be honest I didn't even want him" (Magariel 131). This quote shows how his opinion of his sons changes depending on whether or not they are on his side. Not many pages after, he breaks down and admits, "I never wanted kids. I'm not built for them. I never wanted them'" (Magariel 139). The father's honesty in this quote illustrates how volatile his actions become as a result of abusing drugs. This repetition the author uses clearly displays the extreme change in the father's character throughout the novel.

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Single Sentence Summary: Two brothers must rely on each other when the father who fought for their custody fails to be the man they believed in.

Primary Characters: None of the characters in this book are ever spoken of by name, making it a little difficult to talk about. The narrator of the story is the younger, 12-year old son. He's anxious to have the new life promised by his father. His brother is 15, about to enter 9 th grade and a little more world weary. Their father is a weak man, used to getting his own way no matter the cost.

Synopsis: After the war for custody is won, two brothers and their father leave Kansas for a new life in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Right from the start there is a sense of uneasiness around their father. He meets with strangers in bars, works from home, but seems to do very little, and there's often strange smells coming from his bedroom. The brothers watch helplessly as their father becomes more and more unstable, and then the verbal abuse and physical violence begin. With no one else to turn to, the brothers must lookout for each other.

Review: Sometimes a book can be painful to read. Sometimes the things that happen in a story sicken you. Sometimes you want to wrap your arms around characters and carry them to safety. One of the Boys is such a book. As much as it's terrifying, horrific, and raw, it's also gripping, real, and hopeful. I'd love to sit down with author Daniel Magariel and pick his brain about the evolution of his debut novel. I'd love to know what happens next.

Magariel wisely chose the younger brother as the narrator for One of the Boys. Coming from a family that could be the poster child for dysfunction, this boy had already seen so much. Yet, he was still innocent enough to have unfailing loyalty toward his father, even at the expense of his mother. In the opening chapter both boys helped their father frame their mother for child abuse, giving their father full custody. They'd long been primed for a life of just the boys, and with that, life might have been great. But it wasn't.

A fresh start in a new city was the promise. The reality was a gut-punch, yet something secretly feared. The father these boys loved didn't just dabble in drugs, he was a junkie, with meth his drug of choice. As with many addicts, there was little room in their father's life for anything else. The best he could offer his sons was a Pavlovian version of love: alternating warmth and caring with beatings and cruelty.

"Never before, though, had he handled either of us boys so violently. Until now his brutality had been reserved for her."

"He was confused and frightened. He didn't understand what I was doing. He bit his lip to make it stop quivering. I loosened my grip, then let go of him completely. We'd hurt him. He'd cried for help. I was horrified by what we'd done."

While reading One of the Boys there were many times I cringed with its harsh realities, but others where I whispered, "Thank God." There is no doubt this is a disturbing story, but disturbing stories are often some of the best. That is definitely the case here. This slim book will stay with you long after you've read the last page. Grade: A-
If you liked this book you might also enjoy:

Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller - Like the brothers in One of the Boys, Peggy is a victim of a father who is not of sound mind. (My review here.)

A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara - Both books share themes of physical and psychological abuse.

The Death of Bees by Lisa O'Donnell - After the mysterious death of their parents, two sisters cling to each other.

Note: I received a copy of this book from the publisher (via NetGalley) in exchange for my honest review.
Disclosure: There are Amazon Associate links included within this post.

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One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel | Review - Novel Visits

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One of the Boys by Daniel Magariel (debut) Publisher: Scribner Release Date: March 14, 2017 Length: 176 pages Buy on Amazon Single Sentence Summary: Two brothers must rely on each other when the father who fought for their custody fails to be the man they believed in.

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One symbol I thought was meaningful throughout the novel was a sculpture the father bought  in Albuquerque that represented the hope for a new start in a new town. He explains, "'There was something down here, something in the sunsets, in the mountains, the people. The Indian way of life. I call it... the spirit'" (Magariel 17). Later in that chapter, the father commented on a sculpture him and his boys found in a shop. The twelve-year-old describes, "He brought me to a sculpture of a woman in profile, carved from alabaster, no more than two feet tall... Her hair flowed back with her dress... 'She's got the spirit in her doesn't she?'" (Magariel 20). Here, the father identifies a tangible object to represent his feeling of the spirit he described earlier. Finally, towards the end of the novel when the narrator and his brother were planning on leaving their father and returning to their mom, they went to the park and brought the sculpture with them. The narrator explains, "We left The Spirit our in the park, facing east" (Magariel 115). This abandonment of the sculpture at this point in the plot clearly represents how they're abandoning their father in Albuquerque, their longing for a new life with him gone.

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I was a little confused as to why the author included the epilogue he did because it doesn't give the readers hope for the characters after their escape from their father, in my opinion, it gives readers a sorrowful feeling. In the epilogue, the twelve-year-old describes the the day the trio left Albuquerque, showing his excitement for their freedom, which was never achieved with his dad; the narrator struggled for freedom away from his father throughout the novel. Why does the author choose to create this mood at the end?

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The author of 'One of the Boys' on a father's addiction, revision and a whirlwind literary debut

In his debut novel One of the Boys, Daniel Magariel uses his personal history to write from the perspective of a young boy who starts a new life with his brother and father. Everything is perfect in the eyes of the preteen, but events slowly turn heartbreaking when the father's addictions and violence begin to rise to the surface. The novel carries a lot of emotional weight in a brief space - less than 200 deeply-affecting pages.

Magariel honed his craft throughout the years in places ranging from cafes in northern Manhattan to the foothills of the Rockies, before he ended up at Syracuse's MFA program studying under George Saunders. Raised in Kansas City, the now-Brooklynite called to talk about how his childhood influenced One of the Boys, crafting the voice of a preteen, his obsessive editing habits, and more.
Adam Vitcavage: Since you're a debut author, I feel like we should start with some background so readers get to know you. How and why did you become a writer?
Daniel Magariel: Like most writer's, it was almost a compulsion. At some point, I started to take myself seriously. I was a senior at Columbia and I was graduating soon - this happened when I was in my final year at Syracuse as well - and there was this "oh shit, I'm about to leave college unemployed" moment. I seem to do my best writing under circumstances like that.

I had just made the leap into writing fiction [during my senior year of undergrad]. I had been messing with non-fiction. I thought about doing long form journalism, but during that final year at Columbia, I realized I had been really holding back on what I truly wanted to work on: a novel.

I used to frequent this little cafe on 111th and Amsterdam called The Hungarian Pastry Shop. While there, attempting to put down the first few words of fiction I'd written since a story about dragons in the first grade, I came to learn that this cafe was a workplace for the likes of Nathan Englander, Rivka Galchen, and Julie Otsuka. To be honest, I knew very little about contemporary fiction at that time, and I had no idea who they were until I googled them, but once I had, I started looking for them daily, studying their routines, watching them just sit and work. Beyond my amazement at how long they could hold it in - their pee, I mean - I was enthralled by how they showed up and stayed at it, for several hours nearly every day. There was nothing glamorous about this place - no outlets, dim light, burned coffee, tiny tables - and yet I learned something so critical by watching brilliant writers do the modest work of sitting and working. That place was my moveable feast for the several years between undergraduate and graduate.

At 23-years-old, I moved to Colorado and got a job working the night shift at a treatment center for at-risk youth. It was a lockdown facility in the foothills of the Rockies with coyotes howling at night while these kids slept. I would try to stay up and write. A lot of what I wrote was just a bad, horrible version of what I have now.
Vitcavage: From there you started to apply to MFA programs?
Magariel: From there I started to apply to MFA programs. I actually moved back to New York for a year after living in Colorado for a year. I became a caterer and worked on MFA application essays. I got into Syracuse and moved to upstate New York.
Vitcavage: Syracuse is producing a lot of great fiction lately. Was your novel a product of that program?
Magariel: I walked in with two chapters of this book. They were my application pages: chapters five and six. I wrote them as short stories. I set it aside for two years and worked on other stuff, including a lot of short stories and another novel that I still won't look at.

In the third year at Syracuse, the six fiction writers get to work with George Saunders a lot more and I decided to jump back into this novel. He wasn't in love with what I was working on so he brought up how my application stories had energy. I wrote another story and started working on them sequentially.

He eventually became my thesis advisor and was very supportive of the energy of the project. The novel looks much different now than it did back then. Three years later I had a completed book. A very short book.
Vitcavage: I did want to talk about the length, but first I want to make sure I know about the genesis of the book. It's very emotional and seems very personal. It started as short stories, but were they ever meant to be linked?
Magariel: Yeah, they were meant to be linked. As for the genesis...I don't think I'm fooling anybody. It's clear that to write a book that so intimately portrays so few characters in a very private environment such as addiction with parents the writer needs to connect with it. My father was an addict. My sister, my brother, and I watched - you know, I don't even remember when we realized that he was using drugs. It was just sort of a part of our lives until it was, "Oh shit, that's why he acts the way he does and is weird sometimes."

That awakening to the weird things happening behind the closed door and all the strange signs was the genesis of the book. Then my job as a fiction writer is curating, organizing, cutting, exaggerating, and escalating fact.
Vitcavage: Why keep the boys nameless?
Magariel: It's funny. There are these happy accidents that people have while working with material for so long. Your instinct to do something is different than the meaning it garners by the end. I heard people say there is this anonymity with the namelessness and it sort of makes it universal. The reality is that I feel awkward in fiction when I name people. Once I name people, it doesn't feel real. The first few stories, I didn't want to name them. It worked, so I kept doing it.
Vitcavage: It's funny, I noted while reading it: "No character names - universal?" and it seems like everybody just wants to attribute that to your book.
Magariel: Yeah, and I think it does. It works. I didn't realize until I wrote a few chapters.
Vitcavage: You mentioned length earlier. It's been a trend for these emotionally draining, heavy stories that are 700 pages. A recent favorite of mine was Hanya Yanagihara' A Little Life, which is a doorstopper and your book can literally slide under the crack of my door. What was it about keeping this story short?
Magariel: It was voice. I started writing these chapters and velocity was the most compelling and stylistic choice. I heard, and I don't necessarily believe this, but there are these doorstoppers and readers are losing their attention spans. Even though I don't believe that, I thought, what if it was true, what if I wrote a book that was so fast that readers actually wanted to slow down.

The length was a product of the style. I wanted it to be longer, but it wouldn't get any longer. I also realized what better way would there be to describe what it's like for a twelve year-old to be under the spell of a father who keeps setting fires everywhere. There is no time for reflection. No time to stop and take in what's going on. You're constantly forced into a crisis.

I needed to find a way to do that and my solution was speed. Maybe I was able to get the reader to understand how frantic the life of the narrator is.
Vitcavage: How did you tap into a preteen boy's perspective so that his voice fit the literary style?
Magariel: I upped his language abilities and his ability to reflect at times. I also made the language so clipped and even at times repetitive. My German translator said this was a deceptively easy book to translate, but it's a difficult style to emulate. Readability doesn't always mean a lack of style or a lack of intent in the language.

I needed to figure out the twelve year-old narrator. You try to imagine what life was like at twelve. What it would be like to experience these things. You put him in a room and you have these dynamics. There's an older brother, so of course a boy that age would want to be pals with his older brother. Of course he'll want to worship his father. These things are obvious.

Then there was the speed. The sentences become even shorter and condensed. They had to become more packed with what was essential for that moment in time. I do think the boy's language and diction is upped.
Vitcavage: Going back to Syracuse, when you were working with George Saunders, what was that process like? I think a lot of people who read this kind of interview were like you: younger writers who want to take this seriously. Can you sort of walk me through what your MFA experience was like?
Magariel: I had an insane routine. I'd wake up at 6am and go to the library. I'd write for an hour. An hour doesn't sound like a lot, but that's my rule. When I sit down I don't want four hours or six hours. After that hour I go to the gym immediately after. I'd swim laps for an hour and then go back to the library for an hour.
Vitcavage: Was the gym a place to reflect on what you wrote or just clear your head?
Magariel: I'm reflecting the whole time. I'm in a no-mind mode where I can do repetitive activities. Like walking two miles anywhere. As long as my mind automatically wanders to the work. The downtime is an essential part of my writing. The more I can build it into my schedule and routine, the better the work. I discovered this a lot that year. I was looking for these intense bursts where I'd get maybe 50 words, but they were 50 solid words. I could walk away from them and think about what the next 50 words would be.

One of the best parts of that process was that I would work my way slowly and methodically through a chapter and by the time I was done with the draft it was pretty solid.

Then to get the writer's saint of the 21st century - i.e. George Saunders - to look over a draft was amazing. There was something about writing those four first chapters for him that helped. He was my audience, there was no one else. So knowing that, I obviously I wanted to impress him, I wanted to give him my absolute best work so he could give me the best feedback possible.

There was also that urgency, like in my undergrad - after my MFA was over, I wouldn't have a job, which meant I wouldn't have the time to write.
Vitcavage: After writing and clearing your head, what is your editing or reflection process like?
Magariel: At night, I like to have a stiff drink and read over everything I wrote and line edit. I edit obsessively. I write for an hour burst here and there, then at night I take a pen and just mark it up. I continue to mark up those pages until there are no pen marks. It's likely to take six months of going back to the old stuff. Once there are no marks, I say okay and move on.
Vitcavage: What are you editing on those nights? For voice, for grammar, for anything in between?
Magariel: There are different stages. Grammar is one of those things writers overlook. I mean, in an MFA no one is teaching classes about grammar. When you get close to publication you realize you have to have a grammar style, too, and it has to be consistent. It's like: obviously. Then you question yourself. Do I always need a comma after an adverbial clause that introduces a sentence? Do I need a comma after a terminal too or either? Do I need a comma following a main clause when I have a subordinate clause at the end of the sentence? Should I use italics instead of quotations when referring to something someone says?

It all seems intuitive and obvious, but when you're going through the work you realize there are some inconsistencies with grammar. That was my favorite part about publishing this book. I did a full grammar reboot when the copy edits came back.

But when I'm editing, I'm also looking for anything I can cut. The best feeling in the world is when I write a beautiful paragraph and I get to cut it because the page or the scene or the chapter functions at a higher level without it. Even if it functions at the same level, I cut it. I just look for whatever in the completed work is absolutely essential. If there is any doubt, it's not staying.

I print out my pages every night and take a pen to it. Whatever edits I made is how I start the next day.
Vitcavage: So, you graduate then you make all of the edits, and sell the book. It obviously happens overnight.
Magariel: Yeah, it happens overnight. [laughs] I spent two years working before I sold the book. I mean, let's see: the book was not sold this time last year. [Literary agent] Bill Clegg had signed me around February 18 of last year. It all happened really quickly. I wanted to turn the book in as complete as possible. I brought it to a place where I didn't think I could take it any further. Bill saw it and gave me some notes. Then Nan Graham and Daniel Loedel brought it at Scribner and they gave me notes. Yeah, the book sold in April of last year.
Vitcavage: Then this basically did happen overnight, which is never the case.
Magariel: Seriously. The book will be out less than a year after it was sold.
Vitcavage: What are you working on next?
Magariel: A novel. A longer one this time. My wife grew up in a commercial fishing town and I've gotten to know a lot of the fisherman. I've spent a lot of time down there with them and have plans to spend more time. I'm trying to push myself to a place where I'm totally uncomfortable. The first chapter starts off with a woman reflecting on the death of her child. I'm not that.

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Speed and Crisis, with Daniel Magariel - Electric Literature

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The author of 'One of the Boys' on a father's addiction, revision and a whirlwind literary debut In his debut novel One of the Boys , Daniel Magariel uses his personal history to write from the perspective of a young boy who starts a new life with his brother and father.

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Throughout the whole novel, Magariel kept the main characters nameless. When asked why in an interview, Magariel replied:

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Throughout the whole novel, Magariel kept the main characters nameless. When asked why in an interview, Magariel replied:

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It’s funny. There are these happy accidents that people have while working with material for so long. Your instinct to do something is different than the meaning it garners by the end. I heard people say there is this anonymity with the namelessness and it sort of makes it universal. The reality is that I feel awkward in fiction when I name people. Once I name people, it doesn’t feel real. The first few stories, I didn’t want to name them. It worked, so I kept doing it.

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"'...you're supposed to be there for each other. You're supposed to stand up for each other no matter what... This is your brother for life. You are his last line of defense'" (Magariel 51).

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"I imagined us returning to that moment, back before our dad releases all his air in a single sudden shot, back when our minds are still, and we have no notion that the bottom is about to drop from beneath us" (Magariel 154).

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"My father had begun to walk back to me but had veered off the path, away from the bridge, toward a cliff. And at that point when in real life my father had yelled out, redirected me away from the edge, in the dream I was muted, immobile, my expression indifferent, while inside I screamed and flailed and wept--a great wind that would not blow" (Magariel 96).

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"This was it. This was supposed to be the moment I would get us free. Get us free--my father's phrase. I was revolted to realize that he was so much a part of me. I wanted to expel him from my being. I wanted him out, exorcised" (Magariel 143).

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"For the most part I liked it when my father was high. He was soft, restrained, subdued" (Magariel 37).

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"With my right hand I slapped my right cheek. The left cheek with my left hand, then again, harder ... so that eventually my head turned not from the flinch but from the blow. ... I faced my father. 'Now,' I said. 'Take it now.'"

Magariel knows that nothing drives men more than the fear of losing Dad's love, but "One of the Boys" is not about filial shortcomings. This is a novel about conquering the addiction to abuse and the perverse idea that it's somehow a form of loyalty. That's not an easy notion for the young narrator to give up. Before he learns that being a man sometimes means becoming the opposite of your father, he will submit again and again.

The father's plan is to move the boys to Albuquerque, where the prospect of life away from Mom beckons. The mirage that they've left the real threat behind is enhanced, for a while, by the analgesic beauty of the Southwest. As they come to the brutal, liberating realization that they are on their own, the boys look at the sky and the land with abductee hope, allowing Magariel to revel in piercing descriptions of place, as when he renders the looming mountains "red as stirred embers."

Settled in New Mexico, they indulge for a time in the high of starting afresh. They pick new schools, the older brother poised to become the star of his basketball team. But the father's ghosts check in sooner than they are prepared for.

What emerges is the portrait of a man obliterated not just by a crack addiction he can't shake but by the demands of single parenthood. His sons are a source of devotion and repugnance in equal measure. He might say aloud that he never really wanted to become a father, but he also announces, after the boys have a fight, that it was "my idea to have both of you. ... You wouldn't exist without me. You boys, you're so close in age, you're supposed to be there for each other. ... What are you looking at me for? Look at your brother. ... This is your brother for life. You are his last line of defense."

This is a novel without much in the way of humor, or even chances for the boys to be carefree adolescents, and those that it does have feel tinted dark. Rather than providing a breath of relief, they harden the novel's pathos. Respite comes as nostalgia. At the peak of violence, Magariel often cuts to memories of better times - the boys playing with Dad, all three kids again. This leitmotif, hinted at in the title, also shapes the book's affecting outcome.

Yet for all the pain they inflict on one another, for all the betrayal and resentment trapping them together, Magariel's characters - the male ones, anyway- never feel typecast or pitied. (The mother's presence is too scant for her characterization to become as sage or nuanced.)

One day, after Dad has spent weeks holed up in his room to nurse his addiction, the boys finally see him again. "I didn't recognize him," the narrator says. "The frays of his cuffs dragged across the carpet like uprooted plants. ... He was an electronic device running out of charge." When a police officer comes knocking, the father and boys panic and hide, "crammed together under his desk, my father in the middle. The plan was: Keep quiet and wait for the cop to leave. ... My father shook horribly, his muscles convulsing. I put my arms around him, squeezed as hard as I could. ... My eyes met my brother's, and while mine expressed gratitude to him for locking up, for being reliable and doing his job well, I was devastated to find his full of disgust for the scene of me cradling our dad."

Magariel's gripping and heartfelt debut is a blunt reminder that the boldest assertion of manhood is not violence stemming from fear. It is tenderness stemming from compassion.

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Two Sons Witness the Grip of Addiction in This Gritty Divorce Drama

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"With my right hand I slapped my right cheek. The left cheek with my left hand, then again, harder ... so that eventually my head turned not from the flinch but from the blow. ... I faced my father. 'Now,' I said.