Winger (Winger)

by Andrew Smith.

A teen at boarding school grapples with life, love, and rugby in this unforgettable novel that is "alternately hilarious and painful, awkward and enlightening" (Publishers Weekly, starred review).

Ryan Dean West is a fourteen-year-old junior at a boarding school for rich kids. He's living in Opportunity Hall, the dorm for troublemakers, and rooming with the biggest bully on the rugby team. And he's madly in love with his best friend Annie, who thinks of him as a little boy.

Ryan Dean manages to survive life's complications with the help of his sense of humor, rugby buddies, and his penchant for doodling comics. But when the unthinkable happens, he has to figure out how to hold on to what's important, even when it feels like everything has fallen apart.

Filled with hand-drawn infographics and illustrations and told in a pitch-perfect voice, this realistic depiction of a teen's experience strikes an exceptional balance of hilarious and heartbreaking.

• ISBN10: 1442444940
• ISBN13: 9781442444942
• Publish Date: 14 May 2013
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
• Format: eBook
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

[layawaydragon]

Cultivating The Next Generation of Bros


I didn't think this would be the book for me but it was free on RivetedLit.com and gave it a shot. I was bored, couldn't write, and it didn't sound bad, just not my typical fare. Male protagonists are rare in my read list so I figured I could branch out and kill two birds with one stone.

I should have stopped while I was ahead.
Staring at the ceiling would've been a better way to spend my time.

But did I? No. Now I'm pissed.

First, I don't really care about the rest of the book. It's blah. It's a whiny little baby boy complaining about girls and making a disgusting ass of himself. For whatever reason, his dreams come true. Especially his wet dreams.

His life is soooo awful, except being super rich, unaffected by his parent's being checked out, a genius, a star rugby player, has popular friends, girls want him and thinks he's a loser despite ALL of this.

Zero self-awareness which is typical of 14 year olds. If they're not taught better. Winger propagates privileged white male angst by ignoring what he's lucky for and his quest to be a man teaches him nothing except how to ask his dream girl out and stop making out with another guy's girlfriend. And being a perv is cool, girls secretly love it.

How about no?

Also, that dude on the cover? So not what Ryan Dean's claims to be. If he looks like THAT, he can't even claim the skinny, ugly kid card.

Sadly, I'm used to such bullshit so I rolled my eyes and continued on. Maybe he would change? Girlfriend, no. Instead, it got worse.


Punish The Gays & Teach The Sexist Pig A Lesson

Joey the rugby team captain is gay. He came out last year and everyone's cool with it. Except one douche. I'll talk more about him later. There's also apparently "a lot" of guys that are gay at this school but on the down low apparently.

Joey's perfect guy and not a gay stereotype except Have I Mentioned I Am Gay? Basically, Ryan Dean goes on and on about Joey being gay and he's totes cool with it (no, really really) but we don't get to see Joey express his sexuality as a gay teen.

Most of the book is little melodramatic BS but there's gotta be something real to teach the boys a lesson.

So how about...homophobic assholes come from somewhere else to attack Joey. Yeah, that's great and have another dude injured in saving him because no-homo bromance.

But that's still not enough to make Ryan grow up. So we have the homophobic douche who's really a closet case beat Joey to death on the best night of Ryan Dean's young life.

Ryan Dean goes silent afterwards, finds a second home at Annie's house, and learns an important life lessons.

Bury Your Gays.

Girl on girl actions is great, especially a threesome but lesbians and bisexuals don't exist.

The world revolves around his dick.

Ryan Dean's on his way to being a great bro.

Suggested Reading:


The whole article is fantastic and everyone should read it. But here's the most pertinent part I want to quote because...well, you'll see.

What Led to Lexa: A Look At The History of Media Burying Its Gays

And that is, of course, your right. No one is saying that an artist shouldn’t be allowed to kill a gay or lesbian character. I want to make that clear, since whenever any piece of media is criticized at any time for any reason, the immediate response from someone on the internet is to call it censorship. What I’m saying is that pretending your work exists outside of trends or political context is disingenuous.

Even created with the best of intentions, no piece of art exists in a vacuum. Everything is influenced by the context it is both created in and consumed in, which is why every piece of media is unavoidably political. And every piece of media, no matter how well-intentioned, is going to be part of a trend. The problem is less in Lexa’s specific death, or Tara’s, or Denise’s, or any of the countless others. The problem is that all of those deaths, and more, are just another check in a very, very long tally; a tally that has been building since before most of us were even born.

I loathe the homophobes are secretly gay myth, which is often repeated even by otherwise progressive people. I'm not saying it doesn't occur at all, but every time a hate crime happens against the QUILTBAG community this gets trotted out without proof or second thought. It's the leading cause of homophobia as far as media is concerned. Here's another fantastic article that tackles the issue way better than I ever could,
Are Most Homophobes Repressed Homosexuals? with two quotes because I couldn't pick one:

It would be absurd to argue that all white racists secretly think they are black or want to be black.

Another persuasive aspect of this myth is that it reinforces the widespread cultural fantasy that heterosexual men are unfazed by the possibility of same-sex desire.

[Bianca]

And then it’s always that one word that makes you so different and puts you outside the overlap of everyone else; and that word is so fucking big and loud, it’s the only thing anyone ever hears when your name is spoken. And whenever that happens to us, all the other words that make us the same disappear in its shadow.

[Sam@WLABB]

Smith really knocked me out with this one. This is the story of Ryan Dean West. The ONLY 14 year old junior at Pine Mountain Academy. He is super smart and even made varsity rugby team as a sophomore, but he thinks of himself as a loser. Some bad choices land him in O-Hall, the dorm for the delinquent students. He thought this was a catastrophe, since he could no longer room with his friend, Seanie and JP, but it ends up being a catalytic event, which puts him on a journey of self growth and discovery.

So many good things to say about this book. First, I loved Ryan Dean. I loved his stories and his thoughts. He was, as you will hear many times in this book, adorable. He was 14. He had a lot to learn, but also knew so much. He establishes a beautiful friendship with Joey, the openly gay, senior captain of the rugby team. Their friendship is filled with give and take, but it was really honest. The way RD kept admonishing himself, when he would feel awkward about something with Joey, which he would never feel awkward about with other male friends. Ryan Dean wanted people to see beyond his differences, and pushed himself to do the same.

I loved Joey and how he embraced his friendship with RD. He acted a lot like a big brother, pushing Ryan Dean to see more than meets the eye with many situations and to man up, and get it together, when he starts making a long list of enemies.

I loved that Smith knew how some events needed more words, and others needed less. The chapter breaks were so appropriate and he understood, that for some things, there just were no words. I greatly enjoyed the humor in this book. It was sort of fun to be inside the head of bright, 14 year old boy. I laughed many times, quite loudly. The drama and tension were quite real, and the build up towards the end was done so well.

Overall, great coming of age story, filled with love and friendship and a few tears (I cannot lie)

[readingwithwrin]

3.5

"And then it's always that one word that makes you so different and puts you outside the overlap of everyone else; and that word is so fucking big and loud, it's the only thing anyone ever hears when your name is spoken.
And whenever that happens to us, all the other words that make us the same disappear in its shadow.”

I really didn't know much about what this book was besides it was about a boy who was a rugby player. I'm not going to lie I wasn't expecting to like this book at all. But boy was I wrong. I ended up really enjoying it. In this book, for a change a teenager actually acts like a teenager, while that can be annoying at times, but Smith did a really good job of showing the main characters point of view of things so you never got too overly annoyed with him.
While Ryan is very immature you also have to remember that he is the youngest one of his friends, and while he might be super smart the majority of the decisions he makes aren't.
The only downside to the whole story to me was that for the first good half of the book I didn't really care for any of the characters. It wasn't until Ryan got to be good friends with Joey that I started to care for the book. I loved their friendship. I wish there had been more Joey, but then again I don't because I didn't want to get anymore attached to him then, I already was.

I was not expecting that ending. It has been a few days and I still can't think of anything besides heartbreaking to explain it. Just wow.

See more reviews like this on my blog

[mary]

I enjoyed this book and am looking forward to reading more by this author. I enjoy reading teen fiction contemporary novels and this one was up there for me. I tend to also compare most contemporary YA novels to those written by John Green... And I would say this novel is a bit more cartoonish, but it is also smart, poignant, and addicting.