Boy with an ‘i’
by David Montalvo
A new kind of book—or at least new to me, as I have not read one like this before—is David Montalvo’s boy with an ‘i’ . It is a “partial fictional autobiography,” told with more than words. A multi-media work, there are eight tracks of art-music and an online photo-album accompanying the journal entries, emails, instant messages, and blogs that tell the moving story of David’s breakdown and recovery.
The story begins in Seattle, where David meets for the first time the young man Chasten, with whom he has been communicating on the Internet. They fall in love, are briefly happy, then break up. Unable to reconcile himself to his loss, David goes through quite an emotional breakdown. The reader follows these changes through the dramatics of the Internet and David’s journal entries. In an attempt to deal with his loss, David moves to Boston and finally, to New York, where three years later, he finally believes he has overcome his breakup with Chasten—only to have Chasten reenter his life.
In the final chapter of the book, boy with an ‘i’ , his email address, takes on a new meaning: “Boy with an Eye.” David discovers finally the true meaning and worth of his experience and is now truly on the road to recovery. The reader, too, will be moved to discover how good can come from a failed relationship. As David says, “It isn’t the idea of success or wealth or achievement that I find addicting—it’s the idea that I am now determined to climb those newer, higher mountains. … Leaving Chasten, I found, put me in a state of no-fear, sans fear, where I know that nothing I fail at will ever be as painful as our failed relationship. So I do things now. I walk! And it feels so good.”
(Reviewed by Lee L. Peoples)
