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Choir Boy Hardcover – April 5, 2005

by Charlie Anders (Author)
4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 11 ratings
See all formats and editions
Twelve-year-old choirboy Berry wants nothing more than to remain a choirboy, surrounded by perfect notes, as opposed to his imperfect, quarreling parents. Choral music and the prospect of divinity thrill him. Desperate to keep his voice from changing, he tries to injure himself, and then convinces a clinic to give him testosterone-inhibiting drugs. The hormone pills keep Berry's voice from deepening but also cause him to grow breasts. Suddenly Berry faces a world of unexpected gender issues that push him into a universe far more complex than anything he has experienced. A fantastical coming-of-age story, Choir Boy combines off-kilter humor and its own brand of modern day magic in a rollicking, bittersweet story about growing up different.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    320 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Soft Skull Press
  4. Publication date
    April 5, 2005
  5. Grade level
    7 - 9
  6. Reading age
    13 years and up
  7. Dimensions
    5.75 x 1 x 8.25 inches
  8. ISBN-10
    1932360816
  9. ISBN-13
    978-1932360813
  10. See all details
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The Amazon Book Review
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

Editorial Reviews

From School Library Journal

Grade 10 Up–Berry, 12, lives a lonely and disconnected life at home and finds his only moments of fulfillment and transcendence as a standout soloist in the choir. When he notices that puberty is beginning to crack the pristine pipes of other boys his age, he begins to fear his own transition to manhood. He decides that, in the tradition of the Castrati, he needs to terminate his impending flow of pitch-bending testosterone before it's too late. After an impulsive hack with a kitchen knife leaves his gonads smarting but intact, Berry is able to obtain a pharmaceutical solution: a mixture of testosterone inhibitors and female hormones meant for aspiring transsexuals. He has not yet begun to unravel the complex subtleties of his sexuality, nor does he fully fathom the side effects the regimen will produce. He soon finds himself with a pair of strapping breasts and is thus forced into some difficult life-altering decisions. The story features a cast of over-the-top characters and is delivered in a glib, hipsteresque narrative style reminiscent of Tom Robbins. While some readers may relish the underground tone, others will find it effete and annoying. The sometimes cartoonish treatment, while it does provide some mild comic enjoyment, ultimately subverts the emotional gravity of what are very weighty personal issues. That shortcoming, combined with the adult language and themes, makes this title unsuitable for most collections.–Jeffrey Hastings, Highlander Way Middle School, Howell, MI
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"A coming-of-age tale with universal resonance that also manages to expand our understanding of the word "universal." -- NY Press

"A groundbreaking and unflinching tale of teenage transsexualism." -- Kirkus Reviews

"A journey almost anyone can relate to." -- The San Francisco Chronicle

"Choir Boy may well be the first trans novel with Christian-youth crossover potential." -- Bitch Magazine

"Excruciatingly funny and captivating .[Charlie Anders] has a knack for sharp, dizzy, laugh-out-loud dialogue." -- Frontiers Newsmagazine

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Soft Skull Press; First Edition (April 5, 2005)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1932360816
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1932360813
  • Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
  • Grade level ‏ : ‎ 7 - 9
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 1 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.9 4.9 out of 5 stars 11 ratings

About the authors

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  1. Charlie Jane Anders

    Charlie Jane Anders

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    Full content visible, double tap to read brief content.

    Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Victories Greater Than Death, the first book in a new young-adult trilogy. Up next: Never Say You Can’t Survive, a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times; and a short story collection called Even Greater Mistakes.

    Her novel The City in the Middle of the Night came out in 2019—it won the Locus Award for Best SF Novel, and was named one of the year's best books by the Guardian, Den of Geek, Polygon and Autostraddle, among others, and was optioned for television by Sony and Mom de Guerre Productions. Her 2016 novel, All the Birds in the Sky, was #5 on Time Magazine's list of the year's 10 best novels, and won the Nebula, Locus and Crawford awards. Her first novel, Choir Boy, won a Lambda Literary Award and was shortlisted for the Edmund White First Novel Award.

    Charlie Jane was a founding editor of io9.com, a blog about science fiction and futurism, and went on to become its editor in chief. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney's, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, Tor.com, Tin House, Teen Vogue, Conjunctions, Wired Magazine, the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov's Science Fiction, Lightspeed Magazine, Catamaran Literary Reader, ZYZZYVA, and numerous anthologies and "best of the year" collections. Her novelette "Six Months, Three Days" won a Hugo Award, and her short story "Don't Press Charges and I Won't Sue" won a Theodore Sturgeon Award.

    Charlie Jane also won the Emperor Norton Award, for "extraordinary invention and creativity unhindered by the constraints of paltry reason."

    Her TED Talk, "Go Ahead, Dream About the Future" has been viewed more than two million times.

    She hosts the long-running monthly reading series Writers With Drinks, in which she makes up fictional bios for the authors (and nobody's sued yet.) Charlie Jane also organizes the Bookstore and Chocolate Crawl, which brings a mob of people to local bookstores to buy tons of books, and eat chocolate along the way. And during the covid-19 crisis, she also helped to organize a series of online fundraisers for local bookstores, at welovebookstores.org. She also helps to organize and co-host the monthly Trans Nerd Meet Up.

    Back in the day, Charlie Jane created the satirical website GodHatesFigs.com, which received many "best of the web" awards. She was also part of the editorial staff of Anything That Moves, the influential bisexual magazine, and helped out with many other queer publishing projects including Black Sheets/Black Books. And she also organized tons of events such as the notorious Ballerina Pie Fight—plus an event in a hair salon where people got their hair cut while reading stories about haircuts to an audience.

    With Annalee Newitz, Charlie Jane co-hosts a podcast about the meaning of science fiction called Our Opinions Are Correct. The podcast has been going strong for two years, and won a Hugo Award for Best Fancast. Anders and Newitz also collaborated on io9, plus an anthology called She's Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology & Other Nerdy Stuff, and a magazine called other magazine.

    Charlie Jane hugs trees, and keeps a British penny in her left shoe at all times.

    See more on the author's page
  2. Charlie Anders

    Charlie Anders

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    Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more

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Customer reviews

4.9 out of 5 stars
4.9 out of 5
11 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Lannie Rose
5.0 out of 5 stars Running With Transsexuals
Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2005
Verified Purchase
CHOIR BOY owes, perhaps, more than a little to Augusten Burroughs’ Running With Scissors. Each is the story of a smart, self-sufficient kid living in a whacked-out world with abusively neglectful parents, a loopy psychiatrist, and plenty of statutory sex. Both books have a tone of dry, black humor as well. Of course, Burroughs insists his work is non-fiction, while Charlie Anders’s is imaginary. One questions the journalistic accuracy of Burroughs (to start with, he cops to fictionalizing names), and I am conversely driven to wonder how much of CHOIR BOY reflects the author’s actual childhood.

Although the novel comes with a liberal amount of kink, the innocent, pure sex is more exciting—a kid’s first kiss, the first time he gets to second base, a young boy’s first brassiere. The stuff with transsexuals, cross-dressing, prostitution, and a bottle of Viagra that causes serious mischief is pretty ho-hum, just as it is in the real world if those things don’t happen to be your particular cup of tea; ho-hum as they would be to a prepubescent kid.

As a post-operative transsexual woman myself, I can attest to the accuracy of the transgender aspects of the book. And, having had the pleasure of meeting Charlie Anders several times in some most interesting venues, I can understand how it is she knows all about it.

In a way, CHOIR BOY can be read as an overblown force-femme fantasy, but it is much more than that. It’s the Peter Pan story of a boy who doesn’t want to grow up, updated for the twenty-first century. It’s a coming-of-age story. It’s a story about the struggle to find and create our authentic selves, despite the external, conflicting pressures to be what everyone else wants us to be.
3 people found this helpful
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Tyler Ebel
5.0 out of 5 stars reviews are fun yay!!!
Reviewed in the United States on May 1, 2013
Verified Purchase
words are words bla bla bla. Someone treehouse yard rake peaches and cream. Sometimes allowances break children. Does anyone get me? F- reviews. This book was fun and hits close to home.
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Heavenly Harmony
5.0 out of 5 stars Childhood Memories
Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2014
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This book is especialy good to help remind people of what they sounded like when they were little. It made me feel young again.
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E. Sliman
4.0 out of 5 stars Great!!
Reviewed in the United States on April 8, 2005
Choir Boy is fantastic! Quick to read, yet thought provoking, it will take anyone back to the pain of being a teenager trying to figure out who they are. I laughed out loud many a times and found myself aching for the teenage traumas Berry was going through. Highly recommended!
2 people found this helpful
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Misty
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2015
Verified Purchase
Great shape
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Guy Who Reads A Whole Lot
5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Read
Reviewed in the United States on January 3, 2008
Verified Purchase
An entertaining, sad, funny, swirling romp through, for me, the familiar (adolescence, choral singing) and the unfamiliar (transsexualism, psychiatric therapy). I was with Berry the whole way. The story is well-structured and had me riveted from beginning to end.
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Stephen E. Stratton
5.0 out of 5 stars Growing up Trans
Reviewed in the United States on December 16, 2005
Within the last year two titles have appeared that provide two very different approaches to discussion of the issue of transgender teenagers. Luna by Julie Anne Peters appeared in 2004 and was an Honor Book for the American Library Association GLBT Round Table's Stonewall Award in literature this past year. Luna is the brother of story's narrator, Regan. Regan's days and nights have revolved around Luna and now Regan is facing up to the fact that she has no life of her own and is becoming resentful.

Choir Boy takes completely different tact. Berry is thirteen years old and loves being in the choir at St. Luke's Episcopal Church. He loves the music and the atmosphere so much that he realizes he wants to remain a choirboy into adulthood. He does not want to change, to lose his magnificent voice after training for 8 years. So Berry does what any confused, scared, male might do in a comic setting. He gets himself to a clinic and quickly begins taking hormones and testosterone blockers. He just hadn't figured that breasts were part of the deal!

Choir Boy is a romp through a confused teenager's life. Berry's exploration, accidental or otherwise, of gender issues is laughingly real. Living half his life in the choir and the other half hiding in his room from his parents, Berry is, to say the least, naïve. Berry stumbles through life seemingly unawares of the steps he is taking until he completes them. It is a state of confusion and uncertainty that I remember well as a teenager, and I am sure exists today for many young adults. The book contains some basic exploratory sex scenes though nothing that hasn't been written about in other teen books. There is some action that make the title suitable only for high school or older kids, though these scenes are handled well and realistically by the author.

Choir Boy is focused on Berry. Berry displays all his inner workings for us to see and they are not always pretty or complete. Berry places himself out for the world to watch and the reader has a seat for the entertainment that follows. Not all adults will like Choir Boy simply because they believe teens should face emotional issues seriously and antiseptically. But I believe many teens will appreciate author Anders' honest approach to what Berry is going through. Teenage life is not always well thought through and the results are not always sensible and serious. Unlike the review in School Library Journal would have you believe, this title is definitely a must for high school and public libraries because it provides another view of growing up with trans issues on your mind.
4 people found this helpful
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