Compelling ... Part of the pleasure of Pandya’s writing lies in his unravelling of identity politics ... Pandya, an associate professor in Asian-American studies at the University of California, clearly knows this world ... Reveals the inequality of America’s education system–how it rewards those with money and influence–and is a profound meditation on identity, class, privilege and masculinity.
Timely and timeless ... A novel that carefully plays with assumptions, expectations and subversions ... These are big, familiar topics, but Pandya’s approach to unpacking them stands out ... Racially, with its cast of Latino and Indian characters, the book urges us to reckon with the ways nonwhite Americans view and engage with one another ... Morally, the novel doesn’t offer clear or easy answers. Pandya presents flawed but understandable people trying to navigate a murky situation with high stakes ... Gorgeous yet understated storytelling. The book’s tone highlights that the struggles in Our Beautiful Boys are not exceptional dilemmas but rather uncomfortably common situations ... Highlights how we internalize and project certain perceptions, and what we’re willing to do and say so we can feel accepted.
Sly and captivating ... Pandya masterfully builds three distinct family units ... Issues of race and class are clearly obvious from the first pigheaded teenboy taunt, but they go lots deeper than mere name-calling ... There’s little moralizing ... Our Beautiful Boys is not into easy answers ... Beyond the attuned cultural criticism, Pandya also has great insight for the mechanics, struggles, and mirages of marriage.
Gita and Shirley don’t receive much time on the already- crowded stage, and when they do, I wished for the stronger decision to stay in the POVs of the male characters, since both of the women came off as similarly and flatly dissatisfied housewives. And Diego’s mother Veronica’s subplot of being a successful scholar who has allowed people to believe she’s Latina when she’s not could have been its own novel ... It was difficult to find a rationale for some of Pandya’s choices, but admirably, he doesn’t let any of his characters off the hook. He demonstrates the turmoil of middle age and how it intersects with the impossible job of shepherding children through the crucial years of late high school, when every decision could alter their future ... A clarion call to all of us as writers and readers to pay more attention to both the elusive South Asian American male and to the power of complex novels bursting at the seams with vivid characters, literary homage, and beautiful writing.
The premise of...Our Beautiful Boys, is clever ... While moments of Our Beautiful Boys feel like a whodunit, the story works because it defies genre. It is a combination of mystery, coming of age, identity, and choices, but not in a way that feels like the author is trying too hard ... Pandya has a gift for capturing dialogue among different populations: teens, professors, couples, families, and even football players. He writes not as an outsider overhearing the most intimate moments but as an insider with a beautiful approach to writing from a place of knowing. The dissolution of marriages, adolescent uncertainty, intergenerational feudalism, tenure-track politics, workplace drama, and school toxicity are all tackled creatively here ... So much of the material in Our Beautiful Boys feels familiar but not clichéd ... Handles two issues exceedingly well: married life and racial politics ... At its most vulnerable places, Our Beautiful Boys takes on the complexity of privilege, racial passing, stereotypes, discrimination, hierarchies, and the model minority. Sameer Pandya goes where few writers do, mining the pain experienced by parents who may have lived their whole lives in the US but still wrestle with figuring out America’s existential crises.
