Status
Call number
Genres
Collection
Publication
Description
To escape a brutal life on the Liverpool docks, a boy runs away to sea Arthur Fearon is nearly thirteen, and in the eyes of the law, that makes him a man. He wants to study to become a chemist, but his family cannot afford for him to continue school. The thought of a life working the docks makes Fearon break down in front of his classmates, but there is no time to cry. This boy has to get to work. The docks are hellish, and Fearon's first day is his last. He hops a steamer to Alexandria, looking for a better life on the sea, but everywhere he goes, he finds cruelty, vice, and the crushing weight of adulthood. He will not be a man for long. The subject of an infamous 1930s obscenity trial, this is the original, unexpurgated text of James Hanley's landmark novel: an unflinching examination of child labor and a timeless tale of adulthood gained too soon.… (more)
User reviews
I have to say that I didn't enjoy Boy. I could have coped with the bleakness of the story if I'd found it to be well written, but to be honest I didn't. The conversational language used was stilted and artificial, and just didn't sound like realistic speech. And the boy seemed to exist too much in a vacuum: it would have been a better book if there had been even just one friend or relative with whom he had a positive relationship. A lot of the characters onboard ship were fairly indistinguishable, which didn't help my enjoyment of the book.
Boy is presented by Oneworld Classics in my edition as an 'unjustly neglected work of enduring significance', but apart from a daring frankness (for its time) I cannot personally see what it is that would make it of enduring significance. Boy was prosecuted for obscenity in the UK in 1931, but there is nothing in it that would cause particular comment today. So not a great one for me.