When harmful behavior can be traced to both inherited traits and toxic social conditioning, how do we decide what someone is accountable for—and what they never had a fair chance to escape? In What Boys Learn, Andromeda Romano-Lax drops readers straight into a suburb reeling from the deaths of two teenage girls—an event that quietly but steadily unravels high school counselor Abby Rosso’s sense of safety, certainty, and trust. As whispers begin to circle her son, Benjamin, Abby finds herself confronting the possibility she’s spent years refusing to consider: that the child she loves might be capable of terrible violence.
The novel builds its tension through the push and pull between nature and nurture, a question Abby can’t escape. She recognizes in Benjamin flashes of the same coldness and manipulation she once saw in her brother—signs she’s tried to explain away, signs she hoped wouldn’t repeat themselves in the next generation. But Benjamin’s childhood looked nothing like the one she and Ewan endured. If something darker is taking root in him, Abby wonders whether it comes from genetics, from the world around him, or from the places in her parenting where she turned away instead of looking closely.
Continue reading “What boys learn: A tense, unsettling dive into the stories we tell about boys, mothers, and the damage we inherit”
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