A Boy I Once Knew: What a Teacher Learned from Her Student

Stone was given a task that was impossible to do: being asked to reconstruct a life and a story in a way that would both please Vincent and be worth writing. Granted, Vincent's life was tragic, but is not a story worth repeating. It is not new tale: a troubled gay youth struggling to fit in, finding refuge in a gay metropolis, and ultimately dieing of AIDS. What is much more interesting is Stone's story. What a remarkable situation to be in: Having to write the story of a former student who has since grown estranged; to see her very human reaction to Victor's sad story. Untimely it is much more compelling and thought provoking that the story given her. Stone is an expert of narratives (as per her other book and work.) I think she could see the limits of Victor's tale; which would make for a very unremarkable and unoriginal work. Instead we see how she reacted, and we in turn can react likewise. Tragedy for Stone is not in the grand narrative, but in all the subsequent and supporting narratives. In the tired genera of AIDS-memoir Stone has breathed new life into it. Vincent is surly pleased.

This was a totally absorbing read; I couldn't put it down and finished it within 24 hours of when I started. I disagree with the other reviewers who wanted more about Vincent; this is fundamentally Elizabeth Stone's story, as well it should be. There was a ton of food for thought here, especially in the idea of the "relationships" we actively carry on with people who have left our lives, whether due to death or just diverging life paths. The book is back on my shelf, but still in my mind.

When I first considered reading this book I said to myself "Oh, no - not another AIDS memoir!" having read at least a dozen and lived through the 80's and 90's in the San Francisco ground-zero of AIDS.Elizabeth Stone's "A Boy I Once Knew" is something much more - a rare kind of memoir and memory game in one package. Here is a middle-aged New Jersey mother of two teenage sons in 2001 remembering a 14 yr. old student, Vincent, she briefly knew in Brooklyn 25 years earlier in the process of discovering him anew through his diaries as he grows into a 40 year old man about to die of AIDS in San Francisco in 1995. Ms. Stone ferries the reader through these dizzying time zones and locations with reflections on grief, discovery, death, illness and aging in her own family, relationships to her parents, children and husband as well as her role as teacher, mother and daughter. Reading this book is somewhat like reading a mystery where we know the beginning and the end but read to find out about the more nuanced matters in the middle. Two people become astoundingly revealed here: Vincent both through his own words and the author's recreation of him and the author through her dazzling insights into herself and her subject.

An unusually intriguing, hard-to-categorize book. Yes, the book is engrossing and well written, but it is the basic idea of the book - how someone who's dead emerges from a UPS package and, over time, lovingly muscles his way into the minds of the author and the reader - that stays with you. There is a kind of parabola in Vincent's life - alive, dead, and back to life again - that is fascinating. And the intersection of Vincent's curve with Stone's struggle to come to terms with these issues in her own life adds depth and universality to the story. I found myself nodding again and again as I ran into Stone's (or Vincent's) offhand insights on living and dying.

A Boy I Once Knew packs quite a wallop. Stone's fascinating and beautifully written story of the death of her former student drew me ever more deeply into his life -- and allowed me to join her on her own courageous journey of self-discovery. Confronting issues of loss, memory and meaning, this teacher's gripping narrative took me hostage, then set me free, wiser for my time under its spell. At story's end, I felt affirmed in my often shaky belief that imagination and love can transform dying into a bold act of living. If you're a teacher, a student, or, like me, just someone coping with loss, you'll love this inspiring gem of a book by a wonderful writer.