The Blacking Factory & Pennsylvania Gothic by Wilfrid SheedMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
"Buzz off now; be a nice little intellectual disaster area, won't you?"
"While Mrs. Bannister was on hand, his father had been one of those fixed middle-aged men with a closetful of blue and brown suits and a repertoire of blue and brown jokes."
sup·pu·rate
ˈsəpyəˌrāt/
verb: undergo the formation of pus; fester.
synonyms: discharge, run, weep,become septic
"Other buses had come up behind, teeming, suppurating with boys."
I loved The Blacking Factory. It's up there with the best coming of age stories. It brought to mind Stephen King's wonderful The Body(and its excellent movie Stand By Me), Willa Cather's The Magic Bluff, and even J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, although it's mostly more humorous and optimistic. Sheed writes with a satiric eye for society's rituals and a strong affection for his teenage hero. I wish he'd written about my 15th year. He would have made it much more enjoyable.
View all my reviews
No comments:
Post a Comment