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Boy Wonder (novel)

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Boy Wonder AuthorJames Robert BakerCountryUnited StatesLanguageEnglishGenreSatire, Transgressional fictionPublisherNew American Library (US)Futura Books (UK)1988Media typePrint (hardback and paperback)Pages470 ppISBN0-453-00597-7OCLC17233892813/.54 19LC ClassPS3552.A4278 B68 1988Preceded byFuel-Injected Dreams (1986) Followed byTim And Pete (1993)
Boy Wonder is a novel by James Robert Baker published in 1988. The novel is a mock of the oral history of Los Angeles, California in which the story of the life of fictional Hollywood avant-garde film producer, Shark Trager, is told.

Plot
Orange County, California 1950: Gale 'Shark' Trager is born to long-suffering Winnie Trager in the backseat of her car at a drive-in. Shark's arch-conservative father Mac Trager (who looks uncannily like actor Glenn Ford) learns the news and ends up running someone off the road on his way to the hospital. Shark immediately is a strange kid, suffering from childhood obesity and not helped by the fact that Winnie is a hypochondriac and Mac is a racist bully. When Winnie grows catatonic, Mac brings in Gladys Frazer to take over the wife/mother role in the family.

After a difficult childhood with movies his only respite, Shark, in high school becomes obsessed with Kathy Petro, a daughter of an oil magnate and later an actress. This remains an obsession for him throughout the turbulent years of his life. He becomes a successful avant-garde film director but has an extremely distressing personal life which takes up much of the story. Through a series of surreal events, he eventually falsely believes he has killed Kathy and therefore kills himself by crashing into a cinema building.

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