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Library | Call Number | Status |
---|---|---|
Searching... Silver Falls Library | JF EARLEY | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Library | YA FIC EAR | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
Both delightful and wise, Jim the Boy brilliantly captures the pleasures and fears of youth at a time when America itself was young and struggling to come into its own.
Summary
Both delightful and wise, Jim the Boy brilliantly captures the pleasures and fears of youth at a time when America itself was young and struggling to come into its own.
Author Notes
Tony Earley was born & raised in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, & graduated from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. He attended the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, where he earned his MFA in creative writing, studied under Richard Yates, & won several fiction prizes. He is the author of the short story collection "Here We Are in Paradise" & he wrote the preface to "New Stories from the South 1999", by Algonquin Books. He lives with his wife & dogs in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Tony Earley was born & raised in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, & graduated from Warren Wilson College in Asheville, North Carolina. He attended the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, where he earned his MFA in creative writing, studied under Richard Yates, & won several fiction prizes. He is the author of the short story collection "Here We Are in Paradise" & he wrote the preface to "New Stories from the South 1999", by Algonquin Books. He lives with his wife & dogs in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (8)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Simple, resonant sentences and a wealth of honest feeling propel this tracing of a 10-year-old boy's coming of age in Aliceville, N.C., in the 1930s. Earley's debut novel (after his well-received collection Here We Are in Paradise) carries us, in charmingly ungangly fashion, toward its moving, final epiphanies. Quizzical, innocent Jim Glass lives on a farm with his widowed mother and three uncles, who provide companionship for the boy and offer casual wisdom on life's travails. Jim's father's sudden death at age 23 left a wake of tenderness as his legacy, so much so that Jim's mother still feels married even after his death. However, she will never speak to her father-in-law, who has spent some time in jail and is a despicable loner with a rumored penchant for illegally distilled whiskey. The stormy background Earley provides makes Jim's openness and navet all the more haunting. The narrative develops as a series of loosely related, moving anecdotes: the tragic story behind Aliceville's name, a trip with an uncle to buy a horse that becomes a lesson in the transience of corporeal life, a race up a greased pole at a carnival that casts a new light on Jim's bonds with another boy, Jim's best friend's struggle with polio, Jim's mother's resistance to a suitor, and the introduction of electricity to Aliceville on Christmas Eve. In roundabout fashion, and in simple, often poetic prose, Earley brings his protagonist to knowledge of his identity. The dramatic and entrancing growth of this wisdom may strike some readers as overly sentimental. Nevertheless, the closure the book achieves is solid and well-earned. 7-city author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An understated first novel depicting one rather ordinary year in the life of a ten-year-old boy growing up in small-town North Carolina during the Depression. Jim Glass lost his father to a heart attack while he toiled in the fields three months before his son was born. Now, growing up in the small town of Aliceville, Jim is being raised by his devoted mother and his three no-less-devoted uncles, Zeno and the twins, Coran and Al. Living a kind of Norman Rockwell existence in the mid-1930s, Jim, called ``Doc'' by his bachelor uncles, is just starting to experience a world that stretches outside of his tightly controlled environment. He learns how to hoe a cornfield. Traveling with one of his uncles, he gets to see the ocean for the first time. On Christmas Eve he witnesses the results of electricity finally being introduced into the area. He hears inspirational tales of his dead father as well as horrifying accounts of his mean, ornery bootlegging grandfather, who lives in the hills not far from his new pal and sometime adversary, Penn Carson, a Quaker boy who has been bussed, along with other hill folk, to the school that has just been built to replace the old one-room schoolhouse. And he witnesses his mother turn down the marriage proposal of a well-meaning traveling seed salesman primarily out of loyalty to her dead husband. Earley has a simplistic, at times mind-numbing arch style that is obviously an attempt to give a sepia sheen to what is supposed to be a sweet coming-of-age story. The plot is often so light and airy, however, that the book practically floats away, ultimately leaving the reader with a hole where a heart should be. (Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selection)
Booklist Review
It's 1934, and Jim Glass is just turning 10. Aliceville, North Carolina, where Jim lives with his mother and three uncles, doesn't seem too affected by the Great Depression. But it might just be that life in this little southern town has always been hard. Jim's father, born and raised in the mountains, died a week before the boy was born. So it's only through his uncles' stories that Jim knows him. Like a winding stream, Jim wanders through his tenth year, playing baseball against the mountain boys; climbing a greased pole at the fair; being teased by his uncles; making friends with a rival. This is a deceptively gentle, nostalgic look at childhood during an era when life was by turns harsh and hopeful. Jim is a real boy who can be selfish and stubborn and then determined and giving. Earley offers an understated, poetic tribute to those families whose pride in and love for one another helped them face hard times. --Candace Smith
Library Journal Review
Set in the 1930s, this very appealing first novel is full of genuine emotional warmth. Ten-year-old Jim, the "boy" of the title, has lost his father to a heart attack and is being raised by his mother and three uncles in a rural farming community in North Carolina. Jim is just beginning to understand the world of adults, and Earley captures his sense of discovery with great poignancy and understated elegance. The pleasures in Jim's life are simple: getting a new baseball, driving with his uncles to see the Atlantic Ocean, and making a friend at school. The central focus of the novel is the love that binds together members of this atypical family and the quietly affectionate way in which they interact. This is a story about gentle, honorable people and the inspiring strength of their family, and Earley tells it with compelling simplicity and beauty. Enthusiastically recommended for all libraries.DPatrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Simple, resonant sentences and a wealth of honest feeling propel this tracing of a 10-year-old boy's coming of age in Aliceville, N.C., in the 1930s. Earley's debut novel (after his well-received collection Here We Are in Paradise) carries us, in charmingly ungangly fashion, toward its moving, final epiphanies. Quizzical, innocent Jim Glass lives on a farm with his widowed mother and three uncles, who provide companionship for the boy and offer casual wisdom on life's travails. Jim's father's sudden death at age 23 left a wake of tenderness as his legacy, so much so that Jim's mother still feels married even after his death. However, she will never speak to her father-in-law, who has spent some time in jail and is a despicable loner with a rumored penchant for illegally distilled whiskey. The stormy background Earley provides makes Jim's openness and navet all the more haunting. The narrative develops as a series of loosely related, moving anecdotes: the tragic story behind Aliceville's name, a trip with an uncle to buy a horse that becomes a lesson in the transience of corporeal life, a race up a greased pole at a carnival that casts a new light on Jim's bonds with another boy, Jim's best friend's struggle with polio, Jim's mother's resistance to a suitor, and the introduction of electricity to Aliceville on Christmas Eve. In roundabout fashion, and in simple, often poetic prose, Earley brings his protagonist to knowledge of his identity. The dramatic and entrancing growth of this wisdom may strike some readers as overly sentimental. Nevertheless, the closure the book achieves is solid and well-earned. 7-city author tour. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
An understated first novel depicting one rather ordinary year in the life of a ten-year-old boy growing up in small-town North Carolina during the Depression. Jim Glass lost his father to a heart attack while he toiled in the fields three months before his son was born. Now, growing up in the small town of Aliceville, Jim is being raised by his devoted mother and his three no-less-devoted uncles, Zeno and the twins, Coran and Al. Living a kind of Norman Rockwell existence in the mid-1930s, Jim, called ``Doc'' by his bachelor uncles, is just starting to experience a world that stretches outside of his tightly controlled environment. He learns how to hoe a cornfield. Traveling with one of his uncles, he gets to see the ocean for the first time. On Christmas Eve he witnesses the results of electricity finally being introduced into the area. He hears inspirational tales of his dead father as well as horrifying accounts of his mean, ornery bootlegging grandfather, who lives in the hills not far from his new pal and sometime adversary, Penn Carson, a Quaker boy who has been bussed, along with other hill folk, to the school that has just been built to replace the old one-room schoolhouse. And he witnesses his mother turn down the marriage proposal of a well-meaning traveling seed salesman primarily out of loyalty to her dead husband. Earley has a simplistic, at times mind-numbing arch style that is obviously an attempt to give a sepia sheen to what is supposed to be a sweet coming-of-age story. The plot is often so light and airy, however, that the book practically floats away, ultimately leaving the reader with a hole where a heart should be. (Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selection)
Booklist Review
It's 1934, and Jim Glass is just turning 10. Aliceville, North Carolina, where Jim lives with his mother and three uncles, doesn't seem too affected by the Great Depression. But it might just be that life in this little southern town has always been hard. Jim's father, born and raised in the mountains, died a week before the boy was born. So it's only through his uncles' stories that Jim knows him. Like a winding stream, Jim wanders through his tenth year, playing baseball against the mountain boys; climbing a greased pole at the fair; being teased by his uncles; making friends with a rival. This is a deceptively gentle, nostalgic look at childhood during an era when life was by turns harsh and hopeful. Jim is a real boy who can be selfish and stubborn and then determined and giving. Earley offers an understated, poetic tribute to those families whose pride in and love for one another helped them face hard times. --Candace Smith
Library Journal Review
Set in the 1930s, this very appealing first novel is full of genuine emotional warmth. Ten-year-old Jim, the "boy" of the title, has lost his father to a heart attack and is being raised by his mother and three uncles in a rural farming community in North Carolina. Jim is just beginning to understand the world of adults, and Earley captures his sense of discovery with great poignancy and understated elegance. The pleasures in Jim's life are simple: getting a new baseball, driving with his uncles to see the Atlantic Ocean, and making a friend at school. The central focus of the novel is the love that binds together members of this atypical family and the quietly affectionate way in which they interact. This is a story about gentle, honorable people and the inspiring strength of their family, and Earley tells it with compelling simplicity and beauty. Enthusiastically recommended for all libraries.DPatrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.