{"id":20140,"date":"2013-07-08T08:00:43","date_gmt":"2013-07-08T13:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=20140"},"modified":"2013-06-24T14:24:49","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T19:24:49","slug":"every-boy-should-have-a-man-by-preston-l-allen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/every-boy-should-have-a-man-by-preston-l-allen\/","title":{"rendered":"Every Boy Should Have a Man by Preston L. Allen"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"every<\/a>Trying to put into words how I feel about\u00a0Preston L. Allen’s\u00a0Every Boy Should Have a<\/strong>\u00a0Man<\/strong><\/em><\/a>\u00a0isn’t easy. \u00a0I keep trying to avoid calling the book weird — as not to turn away potential readers — while still imparting the distinct oddness of this novel. \u00a0I want to explain how unnerving the novel can be at times, while making sure that I don’t forgot to tell you that the book was also subtly funny and \u00a0wickedly smart. \u00a0Part science-fiction, part allegory, part fairy tale, and part scripture, <\/span>Allen has created a work of fiction that isn’t easy to pin down. \u00a0Allen deftly employs irony, playing with the reader’s perception of humanity and challenging the way we interact with the earth.<\/p>\n

Every Boy Should Have a Man<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong>takes place in a world\u00a0in which Oafs keep “mans” as both pets and as potential food. \u00a0In this land, a poor boy Oaf owns three mans throughout his life; something that is typically only a privilege of the wealthy. \u00a0Spanning the lifetime of the boy Oaf (and a short time following), the book examines what it means to be civilized through a lens of a long list of divisive subjects including war, racism, global warming, and the ethics of domesticating animals for pets and livestock. \u00a0To say that the novel is unique is an understatement, but there is evidence of a wide range of influences from Jack and the Beanstalk and Gulliver’s Travels to\u00a0Ursula K. Le Guin and Margaret Atwood.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Trying to put into words how I feel about\u00a0Preston L. Allen’s\u00a0Every Boy Should Have a\u00a0Man\u00a0isn’t easy. \u00a0I keep trying to avoid calling the book weird — as not to turn away potential readers — while still imparting the distinct oddness of this novel. \u00a0I want to explain how unnerving the[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,1],"tags":[2312,2311,2309,402,273,2310,774],"class_list":["post-20140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-reference","tag-civilization","tag-ethics","tag-fairy-tale","tag-fiction","tag-global-warming","tag-racism","tag-science-fiction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-5eQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20140"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20140\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20152,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20140\/revisions\/20152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}