Loverboy

A mother’s possessive love of her son takes a dangerous turn in Victoria Redel’s Loverboy (2001). Young Paul and his mother live in a world of their own until Paul begins to assert his independence. When he wants to attend first grade, like other children, his mother, worried she will lose him, takes steps to ensure they will be together forever. Loverboy won the 2001 Sister Mariella Gable Novel Award and was listed as a 2001 Los Angeles Times Best Book. Director Kevin Bacon adapted Loverboy into a 2005 feature film of the same name starring Kyra Sedgwick and Dominic Scott Key.

From a hospital bed, the unnamed, first-person narrator describes her life in flashbacks, spanning her own loveless childhood, to raising her perfect son, Paul. The woman explains that her “non-mother,” Sybil and her father, Marty loved each other more than her. She was merely a project to them, like choosing a plant to add to the garden. To impress her parents, the woman memorized facts, becoming known as “the girl who knew things.” When her parents died, they left her a great deal of money and the advice, “It would do well to find a passion.” She chooses motherhood as her passion. She is determined to be the best mother ever and to raise a perfect, loving child that is all her own.

Not wanting the distraction of a house or a husband, she carefully selects and sleeps with a wide variety of men, never giving her name or telling where she lives. She declares that “many men equals no father.” She miscarries her first pregnancy but becomes pregnant again after a passionate one-night stand. This union results in the birth of Paul.



Paul is everything to her, and she gives him her perfect devotion. She takes care of his every want and need, thinking that she can maintain her exclusive bond with him. She comments, “Has ever a mother loved a child more?” She does not want Paul to be an ordinary boy, so she does not use his given name. Instead, she calls Paul a variety of nicknames, “Pussycat,” “Button,” “Sweetpea,” and “Ace,” but mostly “Loverboy.” As Paul gets older, he calls her “Miss My Darling.”

Together they go on “Roam Abouts” exploring the neighborhood, experiencing and imagining different things. They make up their own words, “naming our very own world into being.” The narrator does not want Paul’s brilliance and their bond tainted by the everyday, common world. She keeps him home from kindergarten and away from the playground and other children. Together they spy on Lenny, the teenager who cuts the lawn. She teaches Paul about art and music and language. When Paul asks about his father, she makes up fantastical stories and simply tells him, “You and me, just us together. That is our story.”

Nevertheless, Paul grows more curious about school. He wants to ride on the yellow bus with the other children. His mother explains he is being homeschooled, but Paul grows more insistent. To take his mind off it, the two vacation at an island cottage. One of the summer renters, Pete, takes Paul fishing and Paul begins to bond with the man. The mother fears this “boy crush” and hastily takes Paul home and enrolls him in first grade.



She cannot bear to have Paul away from her, being brainwashed into mediocrity. She parks outside the school, watching and waiting for Paul. He tells her not to call him Loverboy anymore, but to use his real name, Paul. She worries that she is losing him; that he is transferring his affection to his pretty young teacher, Miss Silkin. Trying to win Paul back, she begins taking him out of school every Wednesday, claiming he has a doctor’s appointment. Instead, she takes him for picnic lunches, or to places like a freight yard, where they can imagine they are hobos. Paul, however, wants to be in school. He tells his teacher that his mother is not taking him to the doctor. The school principal and Miss Silkin meet with Paul’s mother and suggest that she is having trouble separating from Paul. She storms out of the meeting.

Paul now “feels unfamiliar” to her. He puts signs on his bedroom door telling her to keep out. He no longer calls her Miss My Darling. He keeps insisting she call him Paul. He starts losing his baby teeth, and with each loss, the mother feels that her heart is breaking. Each adult tooth, each new grade level at school, is another step toward losing his love completely.

One night she takes Paul into the garage, telling him she is going to teach him to drive. With the car running, Paul practices moving the steering wheel, and they pretend they are taking a driving course. She has routed the exhaust inside the car. She announces they are going to sleep in the car. Paul loses a tooth, and they put it into a coat pocket. She insists the Tooth Fairy will find them in the garage. Paul falls asleep, and she takes a handful of white pills and falls asleep as well, believing that she is saving Paul “from an obvious life” and that they will awaken in “our own world.”



In her hospital room, the nurses discuss her murder-suicide attempt, which is in all the headlines. Paul survived: He woke up to take his tooth and put it inside the house under his pillow. Several men have stepped forward, claiming to be his father. The mother is also recovering. The nurses theorize that she must have simply not wanted Paul around, and now has her wish, because she will never see him again.