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Summary: More a note on style than a review
Review: This is the most thoroughly satisfying and engrossing book I've read for a long time. Writing simply is a difficult task to undertake, and doesn't work every time, the charm being lost in the transition. Some writers do "simple," self-consciously -- "Look at me, Ma, I'm writing simply and starkly." Tony Earley invests his best work with the kind of elegance and grace that makes you wish you could write like him. "Jim" is pure pleasure.
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Summary: My kind of story
Review: For reasons I can't express, for I don't know the answer, almost every story I write has a boy of about ten as a central character. Maybe it's because pre-adolescent boys are not tangled up in romances. Maybe the fact that they are often brutally honest is something I admire. They tend to be curious to the point of being a pleasant nuisance.Tony Earley's Jim is my kind of kid. I liked his uncles, too. Their adventures were an adventure for me.
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Summary: Magnificent
Review: Jim The Boy reminds me of nly a hanful of other classic novels -- Dandelion Wine and Boy's Life among them. This is a gem, not to be missed.
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Summary: COMING OF AGE IN NORTH CAROLINA
Review: Life during the Great Depression was harsh. We see it through the eyes of a ten year old, boy, Jim. Yet the simplistic rigors or farm life lend strength, discipline, and tenacity to this little boy coming of age in Aliceville, North Carolina. His widowed mother and three endearing uncles help Jim face the turning points in his life with courage. The illness of a friend, the coming of electricity, and the marriage proposal his mother receives expands his world, and his adventures in a different local begin anew. Through his eyes, we remember ourselves as children, and easily identify with his perceptions. Touching and engaging.
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Summary: BEAUTIFUL! (I can think of no other word to describe it)
Review: Tony Early tells the story of Jim with such straight-forward simplicity that you forget that you are, in fact, just reading a book. You can feel the heat of the sun on the boy's shoulders as he spends a day with his uncles in the corn field; feel his yearning to know the father who died just a week before he was born. I could go on, but I can't top Early. Go read this book! I doubt that I'll read a better one this year.
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Summary: Slow read but has some touching MOMENTS!
Review: I bought this book as part of the BOOK OF THE MONTH CLUB and started to read it and put it down after about 30 pages thinking I could never make it through. Then a few days later I picked it up again and finished it. It is one of the slowest reads I have ever read and has a horrible ending. It just sort of ends when there is so much more to be told. But the reedeming quality is in the relationships between Jim and his relatives. If not for that it would have received 1 star.
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Summary: Depression childhood compassionately and wisely recounted
Review: Tony Earley's "Jim the Boy" is a pitch-perfect, marvelously told story of Jim Glass, Jr.'s tenth year of life in remote Aliceville, North Carolina during the early part of the Great Depression. This is an elegant, direct novel, written from the point-of-view of the ten-year old who is just beginning to glimpse at the challenges and perplexing questions with which adults grapple throughout their lives. It is a poignant novel as well, reminding us that simple truths which revolve around family life ring majestically and timelessly. It is a testimonial to the dignity of the human condition, as well, as the novel's protagonist, his mother and her three brothers (who become surrogate fathers to Jim) understand, without ever saying so, that a strong family can withstand poverty, deprivation, and even the most cruel circumstance...the loss of a husband and father. Earley's style is somewhat epigramatic, each chapter containing not only action which advances the plot, but a moral epiphany that encourages Jim's social and personal growth. These growing awarenesses, however, are not pat or false in emotional tone. Jim's three uncles assume their responsibilities to their sister and her son with quiet dignity and resolve; Jim's mother has suffered terribly with the loss of her one love in life, and in a series of remarkable scenes and letters, she shows her commitment to her life's decisions with enormous impact. Jim, too, must confront some of the baser parts of his personality. When competitive drive leads him to become arrogant and at times insensitive to the needs of others, his uncles, by word and action, instruct him to the ways of modesty and interdependence. As well, Jim is forced to confront family ghosts and the spectre of polio directly, but only when his family considers him both ready and required to do so. I think "Jim the Boy" could be read by both children and adults with equal, but incredibly different results. It is a novel with universal appeal and impact.
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Summary: an old fashioned childhood tale
Review: From what I had read about this book, I expected an instant classic that would live up to its inspiration, Huck Finn. Though I enjoyed the book's leisurely pace and solid writing, I found it somewhat ordinary. The actual events are captivating as we witness the young protagonist who gains an extra digit (turns 10) as the book opens experience his childhood. We learn before the book starts that his father died before he was born, so he lives with his mother and 3 uncles (her brothers) who never married. I enjoyed the opening chapters in which Jim goes out into the field with his uncles to try his hand at hoeing, only to find out that it's much harder than he thought. This, and the other central incident involving his friendship with Penn and a brief encounter with Ty Cobb were the highlights of the novel. It's very readable and does give a well-rendered view of growing up in a small, rural American town. I just felt that there was still too much distance between Jim and the reader to really get inside the character the same way we do while reading a book like Huck Finn. A very good novel, but a few steps short of great.
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Summary: Jim the Boy, a great and wondeful book!
Review: Jim The Boy is one of the best books I have ever read. It is a very exciting and wonderful book. I really wished it never ended. I read Jim the Boy with my mom. Jim the Boy is a novel, fiction. I really enjoyed it. Jim the Boy is about a boy growing up in North Carolina in a town called Aliceville during the depression. His father's name was Jim also, but he died a few days before "Jim the boy" was born. His beloved uncles who helped to raise him were Uncle Coran, Uncle Al and Uncle Zeno, and they were some of the main characters along with Jim's mom and his wicked grandfather. Three situations that I thought were important were when electricity came to his town for the first time, when his best friend got polio, and when the train first made a stop at Aliceville because the towns people named it after the conductor's daughter. I really, really hope that Tony Earley writes another book about Jim the boy as Jim grows older.
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Summary: A Must Read
Review: Jim the Boy follows young Jim Glass throughout the year following his 10th birthday. The son of a man who died before he was born, Jim is living with his mother and under the care of his unmarried uncles. He moves about Aliceville, North Carolina as he begins to expand his world, a new school and new friends,athe first baseball glove and a chance "encounter" with Ty Cobb. He also is more aware of his family, beginning to look at them, seeing the struggle his mother has with raising a son on her own, his uncles gentle understanding (and their lives outside their care of him) and a expanding knowledge of his father's childhood up in the hills. There are also glimpses of the depression, the social strata, and the expansion of technology into small town life. The characters are all well drwan,and believable, true to the small town roots without being cloying or condensending. I think this is a book for all ages, a true treasure.
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