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Victor Enns is a poet who engages and beguiles by giving us the simple complexities of childhood on the prairies. Boy is richly evocative of time and place: small town Manitoba in the 60's. Enns gives the reader both archetypal and singular experiences which encompass the fluster and cruelty of childhood encounters, the sometimes bitter nature of faith and the fever of new temptations, and understandings. In part an insightful family story Enns reveals the half-secret places where a child makes room for his true life, a life he sees walking towards him from a great distance. Here is poetry both measured and exhilarating, both lyrical and touched by Enns's own brand of dark wit. Encountering the breathtaking and heartbreaking poems of child abuse toward the end of the collection we gain a new appreciation for both the poet and his fearless poems.