Boy's Night Out

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

Even an antihero needs a saving grace. But much as James Wallen tries to
invest the central character in Boy’s Night Out with some positive
ions, his protagonist’s personality and behavior begins and ends
negatively charged. The trouble is that Abel is so sex-obsessed that his
descent into mental instability is pretty well preordained. A story told
in the present tense requires force and movement to maintain a narrative
flow. Wallen’s novel is lacking in both these qualities; it limps
along almost as a metaphor for the protagonist’s flagging manhood. Why
anybody—male or female—would want to spend time with Abel is a
mystery not answered in the book’s 187 pages. His raunchiness is less
funny than sad, less erotic than neurotic. If this is what Wallen was
attempting to show, his skills require some more honing. Boy’s Night
Out reads like soft-porn and is just depressing.