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Title: Doesn't Live Up to Its Promise
Review: I was prepared for a fascinating read about the life of a young boy growing up in racially-mixed neighborhoods, with the author emerging wise enough to find some major themes or concepts to bind his story together, but Honky comes off as a pastiche of different vignettes that don't leave a deep impression. The author's parents seem to me to have been eccentric and self-involved and the other characters in Conley's life just come and go, leaving no real lasting impact. The autobiography that this should have been has not yet, to my knowledge, been written.
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