Title: The Boy Author: Germaine Greer Publisher: Thames and Hudson You know what I admire about Germaine Greer? It's that after all these years, the sycophants and the traducers, and the sheer energy that must go into performing Germaine every time she goes out into public, after all this she is still capable of producing interesting, innervating work that stands above that of her detractors and premature defilers. Now if only it weren't for insipid, ignorant and arrogant media scum who misrepresent complex work for a cheap headline, we'd all be better off. Because The Boy isn't child pornography, despite what the parlour-room prostitutes of the popular press have been whispering. It's not the last rant of a desperate woman, hurriedly fingering herself over old photos. It's not necessarily the masterpiece we've come to expect from one of our great expats, but it is complex, detailed and utterly ungratuitous. Greer's aim is stated clearly on the back cover, "to reclaim for women the right to appreciate the short-lived beauty of boys". How she goes about this is via an in-depth guided tour of art history, greek and roman mythology, renaissance history and social and cultural studies, all accompanied by appropriate representations of painting, sculpture and photography. She looks at the boy as soldier and servant, at Cupid and his changing bodies, and the covering of the boy nude. Whether she achieves her aim depends on how you view nine of the ten chapters looking at the male gaze of boys, and her obfuscation of the ways the boy became covered or shielded from art during the 19th century, only to appear in pornography or gay art. It also depends on your previous knowledge of mythology and art, and your preparedness to dive in with Germaine for a swim amongst the myths. To reward you there are some classic Greer'isms, including "To adapt Eminem, his dick gets shorter and his balls get bigger" on the passage to manhood, and her recasting of Apollo in the guise of David Beckham. Serious and ultimately rewarding yet strangely, perhaps because of my own identity/gender positions, lacking in oomph, The Boy is no coffee table book but a polemic text that begins the restoration of the young male to the centre of the artistic gaze.