The Folded Leaf

Description

Maxwell is the unsung hero of American literature. This is a beautifully observed and moving novel about growing up. The path to adulthood is littered with broken relationships. In the suburbs of 1920s Chicago two boys form an unlikely friendship. Spud Latham is slow at school but quick to fight and a natural athlete - Lymie Peters, thin, pigeon-chested and terrible at games, is devoted to him. As they graduate from school to college, tensions start to surface. It is Lymie who first meets Sally Forbes, but it is Spud she falls in love with. This signals the end of their friendship and the rift is almost more than Lymie can bear.

William Maxwell was born in Illinois in 1908. He was the author of a distinguished body of work- six novels, three short story collections, an autobiographical memoir and a collection of literary essays and reviews. A New Yorker editor for forty years, he helped to shape the prose and careers of John Updike, John Cheever, John O'Hara and Eudora Welty. So Long, See You Tomorrow won the American Book Award, and he received the PEN/Malamud Award. He died in New York in 2000.

So fresh is Maxwell's wisdom on adolescent insecurities, hesitancies and blind worship that it is hard to imagine that his words are more than half a century old * Sunday Times * A true, beautiful and profoundly poignant novel. It is so good it almost seems miraculous * New York Times * A novel of major quality, the fruit of real engagement with other people and the course of their lives * Independent on Sunday * Few novels have charted the end of boyhood and the coming of adult wisdom as subtly and humanely as Maxwell in this profound, atmospheric work which is as moving as it is shrewd and often funny * Irish Times *