Customer Reviews

Jim the Boy: A Novel

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(14)

 

 

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.

When I first starting reading this book, I thought the life of these characters was just too wonderful. How can anyone's life be this plain and perfect. But that's the attraction and what makes this story seem like a sweet story from the distant past when things were so much more calmer and families really stayed together. If we could only all show so much innocense and love for each other today.

"Jim the Boy" tells the story of a young boy named Jim, coming of age, in a very remote and peaceful North Carolina town. It's 1934 and during the depression. Jim's father has been dead 10 years now, and his 3 wonderful uncles are now his mentors, who deeply care for Jim and their sister Cissy. The story from this point on tells of Jim's everyday adventures, and feelings while growing up.

Tony Earley's beautiful descriptions of this time period, small town life, and everyday surroundings are indeed poetic. It's like a breath of fresh air in the countryside, and I mean rural countryside. It's nice to settle back, relax, and fantazise about an earlier peaceful time when people lived so differently than we do now. A truly wonderful book.

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.

Tony Earley's novel Jim the Boy is simply the best novel I have read so far this year. Its beautifully shaped chapters, wonderfully spare language, clearly wrought characters, and heart breaking poignancy, show real craft. I can't wait to re-read it, savour it, and share it.

"Jim the Boy" is not the deepest or the most technically well-written novel I have ever read. But I still found it hard to put down. I enjoyed it. A lot of other reviewers have commented that it is "only suitable for children" (I suppose because it has no... violence, or 4-letter words?) Actually, I am not sure children would understand Jim's feelings at the end of the novel - I think they are something you have to have passed out of childhood to understand. I have to admit I welcomed a book where I knew no graphic... scenes would "sneak up" on me.... Life is more than that! "Jim the Boy" is very simply and sparely written. The style is almost flat. But I think that is suitable for the subject matter - the story of the life of a boy, a boy for whom seeing the ocean is a big thing, a boy who has never really traveled out of his small town. The sketchiness of the story and the characters in a way work for it. In a way, it is like memories: do you remember every dinner you ate as a child? Every school day? No, and neither does this novel. And the book points out something really very important: our lives, after all, are defined by the apparently-small moments. Eating a piece of apple. Throwing a ball and hitting someone. Climbing a tree. We may think we are better or more sophisticated than Jim, but ultimately, we are not.

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.

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.

I appreciate Tony Earley's craft, his simple, yet keen prose, masterfully guided. Yet, Jim the Boy is a novel in which lofty, sentimentalized ideals outweigh and ultimately obscure the characters. What resonated with me after reading the book was the unrecognizable face of Jim as a real boy.

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.

Tony Earley once told me, "Anyone can use a long, fancy word. I'd rather use simple language and do something fancy with it." In his debut novel, Jim the Boy, Earley accomplishes this goal. His language is admirably straightforward, yet his metaphors are complex and carefully constructed. The historical and cultural backdrop of the novel, Depression-era North Carolina, is accurately and compassionately portrayed. The characters of the book are richly developed; I hope to hear more of their stories in Earley's future work. Jim the Boy is a breath of fresh air in the literary atmosphere. I reccomend it to readers of all ages and interests.