Really good, often brilliant. The style and voice are a wonder. Comparing to Tomorrowville, this is much more literary in approach (though there's some very intense action), and the quality remains high.
This book impacted me more than I was expecting, intellectually and emotionally.
There are parts which are shallow (of course -- the protagonist is 15). Some parts seem to be deliberately shallow (and called out as such within the narrative!) to add more impact to other parts, putting the reader off their guard. But overall, the depth is intense.
This is a book that is a lot about gender, which is a mixed blessing, since it's all from the perspective of a 15 year old cis boy in the 1960s, who is unusually insightful (in a way he's conscious of and grapples with) and still hemmed in by his social position and circumstances. Not all of the gender observations work (and some, it must be said, fall entirely flat), but a shocking amount do work, especially for the time and place and protagonist POV. The narrative's deep sympathy towards the human experience in general, and every character in specific, ultimately shines through all.
The intimacy scenes -- of which there are a lot -- are generally very well done, and work even better because of the narrative's insistence on very thoroughly humanizing the book's female characters as much as the male characters. I don't think objectification works without humanization -- and this is a story that understand that.
The novel's structure is interesting. It seems like a loose interpretation of traditional dramatic structures that chooses not to follow them closely. There's a ton of momentum in the latter half of the book that you wouldn't predict if you analyzed this from a theoretical framework.
There's an enormous gut punch which takes place about 2/3 through the book (foreshadowed in the book's description, but absolutely not what I predicted happening based on the description!). I think another narrative would've put closer to the end -- but leaving room to explore the fallout works remarkably well. (And I couldn't stop reading.)
OR
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From the Publisher
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"A Map of the Edge" is the coming-of-age story of Rick Leibnitz, growing up in the Southern California towns of Redlands and Yucaipa in the Sixties
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Orange Grove in Redlands today"Redlands, I’m told, was once a piece of paradise. The Redlands Colony was founded by eastern real estate developers in the 1890s, and promoted as God’s country, a place in the sun where gentleman farmers could buy a hundred acres, hire an overseer, and devote their days to the arts and literature." |
Historical Redlands Mansion"Each of the groves had its gingerbread Victorian mansion, the curlicued porches open to the breeze like astonished mouths, shocked to find themselves flanked by palms." |
Orange Grove and Palm Trees"Half of the original groves were gone, but the city was still hemmed in by miles of orange trees, Navels for eating, Valencias for juicing. Unfenced and unguarded—who’d bother to steal oranges?—the groves were where we grew up, where we played army, where we had our first cigarettes, our first booze, our first everythings." |
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