2023 National Book Award for Fiction (longlist)
Longlisted for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction
An evocative debut novel of trans-masculinity, addiction, and the pain and joy of becoming.
Ponyboy unravels in his Paris apartment. Cut to the bar. Cut to the back room. Ponyboy is strung out and struggling. He is falling into the widening chasm between who he is—trans, electrically so—and the blank canvas his girlfriend, Baby, wants him to be.
Cut to Berlin. Ponyboy sinks deeper into drugs and falls for Gabriel, all the while pursued by a photographer hungry for the next hot thing. As his relationships crumble, he overdoses.
Cut to open sky. In a rehab back home in Iowa, Ponyboy is his mother’s son. In precise, atmospheric prose, Eliot Duncan’s debut novel lays bare the innate splendor, joy, and ache of becoming one’s self.
Genre: Literary Fiction
An evocative debut novel of trans-masculinity, addiction, and the pain and joy of becoming.
Ponyboy unravels in his Paris apartment. Cut to the bar. Cut to the back room. Ponyboy is strung out and struggling. He is falling into the widening chasm between who he is—trans, electrically so—and the blank canvas his girlfriend, Baby, wants him to be.
Cut to Berlin. Ponyboy sinks deeper into drugs and falls for Gabriel, all the while pursued by a photographer hungry for the next hot thing. As his relationships crumble, he overdoses.
Cut to open sky. In a rehab back home in Iowa, Ponyboy is his mother’s son. In precise, atmospheric prose, Eliot Duncan’s debut novel lays bare the innate splendor, joy, and ache of becoming one’s self.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"Eliot Duncan's melancholic transboy swagger sparkles in this classic story of a dissolute bookish Midwesterner who crashes through Europe, falling in and out of love, in and out of despair, adventuring through the nights, and stargazing from the gutter. An astonishing first novel." - Andrea Lawlor
"Ponyboy reads like one of those unforgettable nights in your twenties. Duncan captures the optimism that accompanies the allure of Paris, the high of substances, and the sense that anything can happen when the sun falls; and he transmogrifies the fear that the worst will happen into the small redemptions that are, in the end, all any of us can hope for. Read this book to relive the hazy hours that you lost to memory and to remember the hope that, no matter how bad the hangover will be, the best is yet to come." - Elias Rodriques
"Ponyboy is a novel about self-immolation and rising from your own ashes with a spent match between your teeth. It's also one of the best books I've read about expat dirtbaggery, and ferociously portrays the velvety allure of oblivion and the terror, eroticism, and bright urgency of coming home to yourself." - Rebecca Rukeyser
"Ponyboy reads like one of those unforgettable nights in your twenties. Duncan captures the optimism that accompanies the allure of Paris, the high of substances, and the sense that anything can happen when the sun falls; and he transmogrifies the fear that the worst will happen into the small redemptions that are, in the end, all any of us can hope for. Read this book to relive the hazy hours that you lost to memory and to remember the hope that, no matter how bad the hangover will be, the best is yet to come." - Elias Rodriques
"Ponyboy is a novel about self-immolation and rising from your own ashes with a spent match between your teeth. It's also one of the best books I've read about expat dirtbaggery, and ferociously portrays the velvety allure of oblivion and the terror, eroticism, and bright urgency of coming home to yourself." - Rebecca Rukeyser
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