Guardian Unlimited Books | By genre | Review: The Boy by Germaine Greer: "Boy oh boy

Germaine Greer's examination of young men, The Boy, isn't as iconoclastic as it's made out to be, says Natasha Walter

Saturday October 11, 2003
The Guardian

The Boy
by Germaine Greer
256pp, Thames & Hudson, £29.95
The first thing that strikes you about Germaine Greer's new book is just how lovely it is; page after page of sheeny illustrations of fine, languid boys as seen by artists from Praxiteles to Annie Leibovitz. But this is much more than a great coffee table book. In it, Greer is asking us to celebrate the evanescent loveliness of boys, but to do so in a very serious way. "

And wouldn't she just - from writing the Female Eunuch card by academic card, she has apparently sunk to a picture book - well I'm doing what the Sunday paper readers do in England, talking as if I had read the book when I have only seen the write up. A shameful local habit, as I am unlikely to be sent a review copy, I will glance at a copy on the pile at Waterstondes and form my own opinion.