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Title: Thin and disappointing
Review: After reading Tony Earley's exciting stories in Here We Are in Paradise, I expected a much stronger first novel. In fact, Jim the Boy barely counts as a first adult novel. The book seems to have been written for younger children (its simplistic piety would insult teenage readers.) It's sentimental to the extreme, giving us an idyllic depression South that never existed, comforting as it might feel to some readers. There's no coherent storyline, just a string of events with no tension. The writing is supposed to be luminous and understated but is just painfully plain, with nothing under the surface. It's the literary equivalent of the Emperor's new clothes. A great disappointment.
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