DAVY

Rating:
Summary: Essential, Poignant and Ahead of its Time
Review: Read the other reviews first ... the favorables seem mostly true to me. I'd like to add that this gem, which suffers only from a seeming naivete was not, as I thought, written by a young man in his 20's, but a mature man of 55 born in 1909. Which is a fairly incredible feat, given the jump in consciousness and change in values that came *after* Davy's publication in the late 1960's.

Rating:
Summary: Best Book I Ever Read
Review: This is one of the two best books I have ever read, and I read a lot. (The other is "Liberating the Gospels", by John Shelby Spong.) This book defies easy pigeonholing. It is a coming-of-age story. It is a kakotopia. It is ugly. It is beautiful. It is unforgettable. For background, read Pangborn's "Still I Persist in Wondering."

Rating:
Summary: Best Book I Ever Read
Review: This is one of the two best books I have ever read, and I read a lot. (The other is "Liberating the Gospels", by John Shelby Spong.) This book defies easy pigeonholing. It is a coming-of-age story. It is a kakotopia. It is ugly. It is beautiful. It is unforgettable. For background, read Pangborn's "Still I Persist in Wondering."

Rating:
Summary: Robert Heinlein, Spider Robinson, & Gardner Dozois all agree
Review: This, along with A MIRROR FOR OBSERVERS, are the 2nd & 3rd volumes of the Complete Edgar Pangborn to be released by Old Earth Books. The books are quality editions: sewn signatures, acid free paper, real cloth on the boards. The books will last longer than you! Pangborn's signature is stamped in gold on the front board too.

DAVY features a full cover cover by Michael Kaluta.

If you've read the earlier comments, then you know the story.

Here's what others have said:

"I was delighted all the way through." - - Robert Heinlein

"Somewhere in Writer's Heaven, Edgar Pangborn and Mark Twain are conversing as equals, and this book is one of the principle reasons why. Davy is a kind of Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn for a new age that fortunately has not come to pass, so far: the age of postnuclear apocalypse which a whole generation was once certain was inevitable, the only possible future-and which a new generation seems equally certain is impossible, even though all those missiles are still out there, and U-235 still fuses when bid. Pangborn rose to the artistic and spiritual challenge of finding hope even in holocaust, and spent most of his writing life examining those aspects of humanity and human nature which even thermonuclear fire might find difficult to extinguish. This novel is his masterpiece, one of the great works of science fiction. Over the past thirty years since I discovered it, I have often found myself having conversations with more than one of its characters, and I commend them all to you with warm pleasure." - - Spider Robinson

"DAVY is one of the very best books of its time, vivid, engrossing, sexy, funny, clear-eyed about human folly and yet deeply compassionate, a masterpiece that belongs on the exclusive short list of the three or four best After-The-Holocaust novels--and which may well be the best of them
all." - - Gardner Dozois

Order early, order often!




Rating:
Summary: Sad, beautiful, poignant, uplifting...
Review: wonderful, awe-inspiring...I could go on and on. I read this novel when I was about 13; it is still one of my favorite books all these years later. Although a "science fiction" novel, it transcends the genre. Pangborn was a fine writer who just happened to write science fiction. Set in a post-Apocalyptic world who knows how many years hence, it is the coming-of-age story of a young man, Davy, who is part Tom Jones and part Huck Finn. The word "unique" is not inappropriate to apply to this book. I've never read anything like it, and wish there were others similiar to it.

Rating:
Summary: Sad, beautiful, poignant, uplifting...
Review: wonderful, awe-inspiring...I could go on and on. I read this novel when I was about 13; it is still one of my favorite books all these years later. Although a "science fiction" novel, it transcends the genre. Pangborn was a fine writer who just happened to write science fiction. Set in a post-Apocalyptic world who knows how many years hence, it is the coming-of-age story of a young man, Davy, who is part Tom Jones and part Huck Finn. The word "unique" is not inappropriate to apply to this book. I've never read anything like it, and wish there were others similiar to it.