Saturday Review: “Fragile Beauty,” a review by Dwight Tanner of Jim Grimsley’s Dream Boy forthcoming in NCLR Online Fall 2025.
We’re thrilled to celebrate Levine Querido’s new edition of Jim Grimsley’s novel Dream Boy, a powerful story of queer adolescence that continues to resonate with readers three decades after its 1990 debut. Dream Boy is a staple in Southern and queer literature, conflating the genres to offer a unique rural adaptation of young LGBTQ+ experiences.
The story follows Nathan, a gay teenager growing up in the rural South, as he navigates his first experience with love. Nathan and Roy’s love story explores elements of familial abuse, trauma, and bullying. Tanner argues that these themes continue to challenge and move readers, offering a glimpse into the hidden lives of America’s queer youth. He writes, “It is, indeed, striking how the story and writing come to mirror how queer experience can create varied, even contradictory, possibilities at once: tragic and wonderful, beautiful and violent, hopeless and hopeful, constricting and liberating, complete and ongoing.”
NCLR thanks reviewer Dwight Tanner, who served as the guest feature editor of the 2026 issues.
Read the entire review here and purchase your own copy of the 2025 edition of Dream Boy from the publishers or shop Bookshop.org or your favorite independent bookstore.
