Regular Boy

<B>Set against the raw, unvarnished backdrop of early-1990s New York and the shadowy institutional hinterlands of New England, <i>Regular Boy</i> is a blistering coming-of-age novel about rebellion, identity, and the thin line between freedom and control.</B><BR><BR>Raphael is fifteen, sharp, reckless, and too self-aware for his own goodcaught between privilege and alienation, punk romanticism and parental expectation. After a summer of raves, drugs, sex, and near-miss catastrophe, he is abruptly extracted from his city life and deposited into a so-called therapeutic boarding school that operates less like a refuge than a psychological pressure cooker. What follows is a harrowing descent into a closed system built on coercion, confession, and conformity, where ';self-work' becomes surveillance and belonging is enforced through ritual humiliation.<BR> <BR> Blending fever-dream intensity with cultural precision, Michele Civetta captures the volatile inner life of adolescence with uncommon forceits bravado, its cruelty, its longing, and its desperate need for meaning. <i>Regular Boy</i> is at once a portrait of youth culture on the brink of sanitization, an indictment of institutionalized control masquerading as care, and a deeply personal story about a young man struggling to hold onto his sense of self when everything around him demands submission.<BR> <BR> Unflinching, lyrical, and emotionally ferocious, <i>Regular Boy</i> announces a powerful new voice and stands as a cautionary tale about what happens when society decides that being ';normal' is the highest virtue of all