Monday Rent Boy - by Susan Doherty (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

FINALIST FOR THE PARAGRAPHE HUGH MACLENNAN PRIZE FOR FICTION

By the author of the award-winning The Ghost Garden, a bravely imagined, deeply empathetic novel of two adolescent boys, bound by friendship and a terrible secret. With love and sex so deeply entwined with betrayal and abuse, how does a boy grow up?

Monday Rent Boy begins in Somerset, England, in the mid-1980s, with the winning and heart-warming story of two 13-year-old friends and fellow altar boys, Arthur Barnes and Ernie Castlefrank. Endearing outcasts, they try not to speak of the secret tie that binds them: both boys are routinely preyed on by The Zipper, their nickname for Father Ziperto, the local Catholic priest. Still, they find adventure and release in the mischief they get up to together, as each also tries to survive in other ways. Arthur, a great reader and denier of reality, finds an ally in town bookseller Marina Phillips. Ernie, a gifted mathematician and animal lover, is not so lucky. As he and Arthur age out of the abuse, Ernie notices younger and equally vulnerable boys being recruited. When he tries to blow the whistle, nobody believes him. At 16, he disappears, a loss that almost destroys his best friend but also confirms for Arthur that he was smart to stay silent.

Arthur eventually also turns his back on the mystery of Ernie's disappearance, but his bookselling mentor and friend Marina Phillips finds a way to follow Ernie where rage and betrayal has led him--into the darkest corners of the dark web--a search that ultimately helps Arthur reckon with what happened to them both. In the novel's stunning, deeply affecting conclusion, Doherty draws a line directly from the covered-up abuse of children by Catholic priests to the current proliferation of child pornography and predators online--miraculously revealing the true heart of darkness while managing to affirm the light.

Review Quotes

A McNally Robinson and Winnipeg Free Press bestseller

"This unflinching yet incredibly gentle depiction of the experience of two boys abused in the Catholic Church brings to life a tragedy that ended up being global in scope but began as unspeakable acts committed against one child after another. A stunning, literary take on a dark, heartbreaking slice of humanity." --Carrie Mac, bestselling author of Last Winter

"Susan Doherty brilliantly brings to life the soaring, simple joy of childhood, even as she guides us fearlessly and fascinatingly into the origins of the dark web. Monday Rent Boy is a compelling page-turner, a sensitive yet stark portrait of crimes against childhood and ultimately a triumphant testament to the healing power of friendship." --Ann-Marie MacDonald, award-winning author of Fayne

"Monday Rent Boy is a masterfully wrought novel that goes to some very dark places--secluded church vestries, locked basements, the murkiest corners of child exploitation. But Susan Doherty, armed with a belief in the inherent value of truth-telling, stares down every horror. Like her characters Arthur and Ernie--fending for themselves and each other against seemingly insuperable odds--her writing holds out hope." --Ian McGillis, journalist and author of A Tourist's Guide to Glengarry

"If fools rush in where angels fear to tread, then Susan Doherty is the holiest of fools. Her haunting, brave, brilliantly realized work exposes with a nuanced compassion the devastating effects of the 'dark web' that is pedophilia. Only radical love can counter radical evil, and this extraordinary book lights the way." --James FitzGerald, author of What Disturbs Our Blood, winner of the 2010 Writers' Trust Non-Fiction Prize

"A searing novel that cuts painfully close to the truth: the vulnerability of children, the sly grooming by sexual predators, the guilt, the fearful silence and the buried secrets of the victims--and how the Internet made all of this a multi-million-dollar business. This book will shock, scare and anger you--all the more so because it is all too real." --Julian Sher, author of One Child at a Time: The Global Fight to Rescue Children from Online Predators

"An unflinching exploration of the traumatic legacy of childhood sexual abuse that is rife with anger, but also offers hope of a way forward." --Toronto Star

About the Author

SUSAN DOHERTY's award-winning debut novel, A Secret Music (2015), was followed four years later by The Ghost Garden, the biography of a woman living with schizophrenia. She has worked on staff for Maclean's, and freelanced for the International Herald Tribune, La Tribune de Genève, and the Independent in London; for eighteen years she ran her own advertising production company. She has served on the boards of the Royal Conservatory of Music, the Quebec Writers' Federation and Nazareth House, a home for those afflicted by addiction and homelessness. Since 2009, she has volunteered at the Douglas Institute, a psychiatric hospital, working with people living with severe mental illness. She is married to the educator Hal Hannaford.