Rating: 
Summary: Get ready to sleep
Review: At first, I thought this was a parody of a boring way-too-wholesome children's book, but I was wrong. The sickening and soporific scenes keep stacking up into one giant sentimental sleeping pill. This is the same snooze-inducing drivel that has-been writing professors praise and perpetuate in the cookie-cutter MFA programs across the country.
Rating:
Summary: Sentimental and embarrassing
Review: This novel might be OK for children, but for grown-ups it's an overly idealized (to put it mildly) fantasy of depression-era Southern life. I kept expecting Andy and Opie to come walking in, carrying their fishing poles; at least something funny might have happened, that way. But this earnest, plodding book about an unbelievably good world is actually kind of an insult to the way southern people really lived in the 1930s, black and white. What was the author thinking?
Rating: 
Summary: There's a little Jim in all of us
Review: Childhood memories are some of the strongest sensory feelings anyone will ever have. When we were kids we knew how we felt, we just couldn't always determine why we felt that way and couldn't possibly put our complicated feelings into words.In "Jim the Boy" Tony Earley takes universal childhood emotions of pride, jealousy, greed and companionship and strikes up a story to rummage through his own memory of childhood complexes. It's been done before--"The Wonder Years" TV show comes to mind--but Earley doesn't play for laughs here. Rather he takes a grown-up's understanding and experience of the world and latches it onto the illuminating eye of a child. Earley succeeds in creating a quick, nimble book that, even though it's set in 1924, could have happened yesterday.
Rating: 
Summary: Look out Charlotte's Web!
Review: I've seen many books in my life but not one as good and wholesome as Jim the Boy. After reading the few reviews saying it's suitable only for children I felt I must disagree with them and agree with the majority saying how wonderful it is. Jim the Boy is a heart warming tale for everyone. True, it is suitable for children but it's also a book that you as an adult can read without being disgusted by the language and graphic details most authors use today. What a few would call suitable only for children I feel is calling as an adult. It is a tale so clean and simple that it makes one yearn for more. Jim the boy is a book that is for everyone and will quickly become a classic, rivaling Charlotte's Web and Where the Red Fern Grows. Keep writing Mr. Earley and Thank you for Jim the Boy.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written hokum
Review: Earleys' rendering of a Perfect Past has it's attractions andcharms, and is in many ways endearing, as long as the reader remembersthat there was never a time in either their life or the life of anyone they know when such earnest happiness and satisfyingly extended good- will ruled the day. Suspension of disbelief is the best advice before perusing these pages. Early evokes the simple tale of a boy being raised by his mother and four uncles in such a poetically sustained way--sure language, spare cadences, a sharp ear for knowing when stop a description-- that you forgive the over ripe sentimentality that is at the heart of this book. The success, I think, is in the author's ability to describe Jim's point of view in a straight forward manner, free of seeming authorial intrusion: Jim and the others, particularly the Uncles, emerge as credible characters, each with their particular character ticks and quirks. This set of relationships, balanced and relatively sober, almost makes up for the sheer mysticism that Earley wants to cast on rural South Carolina during the 30s. There is something subtly fake about this beguilingly transparent coming-of-age story, a Disney tale for the the Postmodern period, a reverse Alice Walker, a past that is re-assembled into a more perfect union. Needless to say, I'm ambivilent about the tale and the telling, but it is a tribute to Earley's art that his debut novel resonates as well as it does.
Rating:
Summary: A Treasure
Review: This is a book about the spiritual nourishment of a young soul. It is as patiently and impeccably crafted as a fine piece of simple furniture, made without glue, nails, or embellishment. Smooth and beautiful without a false or unnecessary move. Very few authors today have that restraint, finesse, and wisdom.
Rating:
Summary: Bright and Intelligent
Review: The first thing I noticed when reading some of the reviews below and above was that the people who reviewed this book so harshly (and cynically) did so with a bit of vitriol that I can guess spills over into their everyday life. I pity their coworkers. I have read Mr. Earley's book and liked--and I am not a schmaltzy, vacuous individual. I may not reread this book again in the two weeks, but I am glad I took time out of my otherwise inane life to spend a moment with Jim. I wish the other readers did not bully the poor young man so much--I wonder what they were like as children? Perhaps they still are?
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful book that reaffirms love and faith
Review: This book will do more to restore the human heart andantimaterialism than all the polemical works in the world. It isabout dignity and faith, sure of hand, deceptively simple. Buy it. Treasure it. Share it...
Rating:
Summary: Oprah's next pick
Review: "Schmaltzy and vacuous" pretty much covers it, though one might also add that this novel consistently attempts to pass off conventional wisdom as insight and panders to the lowest literary common denominator while trying, through understatement, to pass itself off as art. Should sell a million copies-- look for it as Oprah's next pick.
Rating:
Summary: Sweet peaceful tale of family trust and love
Review: I have been surprised like this only once before in recent memory. That was by Annie Dillard's American Childhood. Jim the Boy has that same evocative power of childhood. Earley maintains a level of tension without ever betraying a real-life example of growing up in an unusual extended family. There is discipline without abuse, love without depravity, and descriptions of the Carolinas that would make a home boy say, "Oh, yes. Oh, my, yes." Jim the Boy is that rare combination of power and peace that makes you want to put the book down carefully when you're done reading, regretfully, the last page.
| 
