It's a Man's World

THE SECRET LIVES OF BOYS

Inside the Raw Emotional World of Male Teens

By Malina Saval

Basic Books. 257 pp. $25.95

"There is a general consensus," writes Malina Saval, "that American culture has failed our boys, and they have failed us." In her first book, Saval seeks to refute this misconception by allowing her subjects -- 10 teenage boys from various socioeconomic backgrounds -- to speak for themselves. They even choose their own labels -- "The Teenage Dad," "The Sheltered One," "The Gay, Vegan, Hearing-Impaired Republican." Provocative, but there's a problem: The boys exaggerate, downplay and sometimes flat-out lie.

A Connecticut teen pegged as "The Troublemaker," for example, turns out to be a particularly unreliable narrator. He boasts of a scar he got from a bullet wound; his mother says it's actually from a dog bite he got as a child. He claims he does cocaine as often as he can, that nine of his friends have died and that he once suffered a three-day hangover. Though Saval doubts what he says, she doesn't fact-check much beyond asking his mom. Instead, she offers such trite observations as "most of the boys I met experienced moments of self-doubt but found the courage to overcome them." The book ends up feeling more like a sociology lecture than the inside look at a "raw, emotional world" that it promises to be.

-- Rachel Saslow