If I were to describe Jim
the Boy, the first novel of Tony Earley, in just a few words, I think I would
call it Edgar Sawtelle lite. It deals with similar settings, with both taking
place in rural settings during America’s depression, with Wroblewski’s The
Story of Edgar Sawtelle taking place in Wisconsin and this taking place in the
Carolinas. They also try to recreate and recapture the feeling of the novels of
John Steinbeck but taking great care to infuse modern day feelings into their
period pieces. The big difference between both books is that while The Story of
Edgar Sawtelle has a sort of old world grandness about it that makes for a
compelling and important read, Jim the Boy never really feels all that worth it
most of the time. It has a few cool moments, but it is just too short and too
quick of a read for me to feel all that nostalgic for a time I wasn’t alive. It
has a very simple story: Jim is born a few days after his father dies in
farming accident and is raised on a farm owned by his three married uncles and
his widowed mother. It traces the experiences he has growing up, including the
importance and difficulty of hard work, the grand event of going to school for
the first time, and the heartbreaking loss of friendship to disease and
poverty, which is brought to life in an intense scene which involves Ty Cobb
supposedly being on a train. But all these events are too brief, and although I
know there is a sequel to this, I never felt what I was reading had any kind of
urgency. But beside that, it is a good book, and I look forward to reading the
sequel in the near future
Rating: 4/5
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