Praise
In Pandya’s riveting latest, a Southern California high school is roiled when three football players are accused of assaulting a classmate . . . As tensions ignite between the families along class and racial lines, the boys’ pact breaks down and the plot ramps up. . . This is a stunner.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Pandya writes with elegance and empathy, weaving together these characters’ lives into an insightful, nuanced story of class, identity, and friendship. Our Beautiful Boys is as thought-provoking as it is compelling. I couldn’t put it down.”—Charles Yu, National Book Award–winning author of Interior Chinatown
“Compassionate and propulsive, OUR BEAUTIFUL BOYS imbues a page-turning thriller mystery with moral force, as three teenage boys are forced to confront their own violent impulses. A deftly woven tale of fraying loyalties and family secrets.” – Tania James, National Book Award Longlisted author of Loot
“Our Beautiful Boys is a kaleidoscopic marvel, at once sweeping in scope and intimately detailed. In uncovering fresh insights about masculinity, race, and class, Sameer Pandya delivers a blazing portrait of the contemporary American family.”—Kirstin Chen, New York Times bestselling author of Counterfeit
Our Beautiful Boys is flat-out remarkable. A sports story—sure. But one that reaches deep into the souls of its characters to excavate complicated and necessary revelations about race, loyalty, and the complexity of masculine identity. Sameer Pandya is a graceful and elegant writer whose stories are unforgettable. –Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women
“Our Beautiful Boys is such a tight spiral, knitting together themes of race, class, identity, sports, and what-would-I-do? moral ambiguity. . . . A triumph, by turns, of literature, sports writing, cultural criticism, and ethical philosophy.”—L. Jon Wertheim, 60 Minutes correspondent and author of Strokes of Genius
“Engrossing and suspenseful, this is a story about the search for the truth as three high school athletes navigate race, class, and ambition in the unforgiving ecosystem of our current day. Pandya deftly reveals the vulnerability beneath the swagger of not just our three teen football players but almost all their parents. . . . A compulsive read that explores the fragility of trust and how bad decisions set off a chain of irreversible consequences.”—Marjan Kamali, national bestselling author of The Lion Women of Tehran
“Tense and tender, this is a story of how we wound our boys on the cusp of adult masculinity as we grasp around for our own place in America’s hierarchies of privilege, alienation, and belonging. I would have read it in one sitting, but I had to set it down to call my son.”—Sonora Jha, author of The Laughter
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About OUR BEAUTIFUL BOYS
When the star players on a high school football team are accused of violence by another student, their secrets–and the secrets of their parents–threaten to shatter their entire community in a gripping novel of race, class, and privilege from the author of Members Only.
Vikram Shastri has always been a good kid. He’s got a 4.6 GPA, listens to his parents, barely hits the parties, and is on track for a fancy college. But when he gets the chance to play on his high school football team, his world suddenly starts to shift. Basking in their recent victory, Vikram and his teammates Diego and MJ attend a party at an abandoned house in the Southern California foothills, located right below three ancient caves. They find themselves lost in the dark of night in one of the caves, carried away by male bravado, with a classmate who has annoyed them for years.
But when the kid emerges with injuries that prove to be more serious than the all-star boys intended, they are suspended for the rest of the season, and the boys’ parents are brought in to manage the situation. As the parents try to protect their boys, they are also managing their own complicated family and professional lives. While the parents work with, and against, one another to figure out the truth about that night, the boys must come to terms with how much of their own secrets they’re willing to reveal to clear their names.
Insightful and deeply human, Our Beautiful Boys is about race and class, parents trying to raise good boys in our fraught times, and the conflict we find when all of these slam together. It’s about the kids inside each parent and the games the world makes each of us play.