Brief Summary Of The Novel 'Boy21' By Matthew Quick

The novel Boy21 was written by author Matthew Quick. The story takes place in the broken down city of Bellmont. The author organizes the novel in chronological order to keep the time frames in correlation with when the events occurred. The setting is critical to the story because the school he goes to generally has a direct effect on events that occur during the story. The story has both a humorous but serious tone throughout different parts of the story.
The protagonists of the book are Finley, Russ, and Erin. The antagonists are the Irish Mob and the bullies at the school they attend. The protagonists are all static characters because they undergo no change. The main antagonist in the story is a 19 year old senior who makes moves at Erin and constantly bullies Finley. The story depicts him dropping Finely as he proceeds to punch Erin in the nose. I can infer that the 19 year old senior thinks that due to his age and size, he can do what he wants while disregarding the feelings of others. The character I feel I relate to the most is Erin because she doesn’t give up and won’t back down from any challenge.
The main conflict in the story is that Russ is traumatized after the death of his parents so he stops playing basketball for the school and as the story progresses, Erin gets hit by a car which motivates him to then rejoin the team. Three critical events that shaped the development of the story are; 1) When Russ lost his parents, 2) When Erin was run over by a car and couldn’t play basketball anymore. , and 3) when Russ began to play basketball again. The part that helped me predict the outcome of the conflict was when Erin was run over which led to Russ rejoining the team. The title relates to the story because “Boy21” is also Russ’ basketball