Garbage Boy
The High Bar of Low Expectations
In the gritty novel Garbage Boy, a principled high schooler’s mundane life takes a dangerous turn.
In Michael McMullen’s bleak coming-of-age novel Garbage Boy, a teenager’s family struggles are complicated by issues of drugs, racism, and garbage in 1970s Ontario.
Once abused by his alcoholic father and by his classmates, Scarface is now his school’s student body president. He works on a garbage truck crew to provide for himself, his concerned and emotionally supportive mother, and his sister; he makes more money, and receives more knowledge, than he imagined that he could in that role. His crew members, Mister and Stone Pony, push him to better himself, coaching him on physical fitness and encouraging him to go to college. They also lecture him on treating the women in his life with respect. But a friend with stories about foreign prisons and a drug cartel disabuses him of the idea that all is well: there are dark dealings among his crew and family. When the law and opposing gangs begin to close in on Scarface and his crew, they leave town to avoid confrontation.
Scarface is constructed as a principled if idealized hero to whom relationships and loyalty are everything. Without a father figure, he forms close bonds with his remaining family, friends, and crew. Though others around him hold racist views, he treats Mister and Stone Pony, who are Black and Native American, with respect; even when their drug deals are revealed, his faith in them doesn’t waver. And he learns from the mistakes of others: having witnessed his mother be abused, he chooses to be protective and respectful of women. Through every dark turn, he remains unflappable: when his friends are imprisoned, he feels empowered to step up and work to free them, and he even saves a classmate from a would-be rapist.
Scarface is the primary narrator, though Mister, Stone Pony, and Scarface’s mother also share their perspectives (both on Scarface and about their pasts). Tertiary perspectives, including those of Scarface’s friends Bogyman and Scarecrow and of Mister and Stone Pony’s associate Mr. Clampett, dilute the story’s focus, though; they’re used to shoehorn in revelations about the garbage crew’s connection to drugs and gang affiliations. Still, some such deviations hold interest, as when Bogyman recalls his and Scarecrow’s time in a Turkish prison. For clarity, black-and-white illustrations are used to indicate which character is speaking in a given chapter.
In the gritty novel Garbage Boy, a high schooler’s mundane life takes a dangerous turn thanks to his garbage crew encounters with his city’s underbelly.
Reviewed by
Grace Rogers
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