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New York Times
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
When a High School Fight Tears a Community Apart
From the first page of Sameer Pandya's timely and timeless new novel, 'Our Beautiful Boys,' we're dropped into a series of contradictions. We're introduced to a town that's described as 'nothing extraordinary,' but then ushered to a trio of caves cloaked in mystery and lore. We're told these caves are very old, but then we focus in on contemporary dramas. Thus, the tone is set — here is a novel that carefully plays with assumptions, expectations and subversions. At the center of the novel is Vikram Shastri, an Indian American 11th grader living in Southern California, who is recruited for his high school's football team. Vikram's parents, Gita and Guatam, are none too thrilled — American football is an undeniably violent sport. And as the family's cherished photo of Vikram's great-grandfather marching with the Mahatma Gandhi illustrates, violence of any type is not the Shastri way. But Vikram wants to play. As he pursues the sport, he finds himself thrust into a wildly unexpected alliance with two other boys: Diego Cruz, an 11th grader of Latin American descent who, pressured by his single mother, plays in the hopes that football will land him a full ride to college; and MJ Berringer, the Yale-bound senior quarterback who is actively wrestling with the privilege inherent in being white and wealthy. As it turns out, all three boys have unpleasant histories with another kid around school: a troubled outcast named Stanley Kincaid. And those unpleasant histories come to the fore one fateful night. Looking to celebrate a football victory, Vikram, Diego and MJ attend a party at an abandoned house in the hills outside their town, and while exploring the aforementioned caves, which are nearby, they have a physical altercation with Stanley. After the fight, they flee the scene, and when Stanley finally emerges sometime later, the boys see that he's terribly hurt, with wounds that far exceed what the boys say they inflicted. Stanley claims that one of the three boys returned alone and is responsible for the most severe of his injuries, though he's not sure which one because it was dark and he was intoxicated. And with that, we're thrust into a series of events that force the characters, their parents and the reader to grapple with the ways the boys' different backgrounds impact their experience of being accused of wrongdoing. Is this a book about race relations? Absolutely and from multiple directions. It's also a book about class. And immigration. And opportunism. And gender. And marriage. And parenthood. And America. These are big, familiar topics, but Pandya's approach to unpacking them stands out. First, it's not Black and white (racially) nor black and white (morally). Racially, with its cast of Latino and Indian characters, the book urges us to reckon with the ways nonwhite Americans view and engage with one another. And morally, the novel doesn't offer clear or easy answers. Pandya presents flawed but understandable people trying to navigate a murky situation with high stakes: the futures of these boys. The second thing that stands out is Pandya's gorgeous yet understated storytelling. The book's tone highlights that the struggles in 'Our Beautiful Boys' are not exceptional dilemmas but rather uncomfortably common situations. Above all else, 'Our Beautiful Boys' is a book about the lies we knowingly or unwittingly tell ourselves. This is a book that highlights how we internalize and project certain perceptions, and what we're willing to do and say so we can feel accepted. In this way, the three caves, as stark and mysterious as ever, are not just a setting but also a metaphor. Vikram, Diego and MJ are just as opaque as those rocky tunnels; they haven't even begun to explore the depths of who they are. I was reminded with every twist and turn in this story — and they are plentiful — that each of us is a cave of our own.
The Guardian
30-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Our Beautiful Boys by Sameer Pandya review – teenage lives at the crossroads
The Marabar caves in A Passage to India represent the breakdown of order and communication as well as provoking the terrible accusation that drives EM Forster's story. Sameer Pandya plays with a similar plot device in his compelling US-based novel, including an epigraph from Forster's classic. It is set in southern California, where three teenage boys on the brink of adulthood – stars of their high school American football team with promising college careers ahead of them – attend a party at an abandoned house in the hills. Vikram is an Indian American, while Diego, who is Latino, lives with his academic mother. MJ is white with wealthy parents. Part of the pleasure of Pandya's writing lies in his unravelling of identity politics – a theme explored in his debut, Members Only. In one of three ancient caves, the teenagers confront Stanley Kincaid, a school bully and drug dealer. He drunkenly lunges at them and they hit back to 'calm him down'. Later Stanley emerges from the cave bloodied and battered and accuses the boys of assaulting him, claiming that one of them returned and beat him so badly he had to pretend to pass out. Stanley is hospitalised, the boys are suspended and their brilliant trajectories into college are abruptly threatened. As the school principal investigates the various rumours swirling around the school and tries to ascertain what actually happened, the families meet to assess and limit the damage to their children's prospects. Along the way we learn of their troubled professional and home lives and realise the boys are carrying the weight of their parents' expectations. Pandya, an associate professor in Asian-American studies at the University of California, clearly knows this world. He gets under the skin of his three principals, their hopes, aspirations and uncertainties, contrasting these with the ideals and politics of their parents. Our Beautiful Boys reveals the inequality of America's education system – how it rewards those with money and influence – and is a profound meditation on identity, class, privilege and masculinity. Our Beautiful Boys by Sameer Pandya is published by Bloomsbury (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at Delivery charges may apply
