Edisto

First lines

I'm in Bluffton on a truancy spree, cutting, we call it, but all you do is walk off the unfenced yard during recess, where three hundred hunched-over kids are shooting marbles.

About this book

"A novel that has drawn comparisons with the work of J.D. Salinger, Truman Capote, and Flannery O?Connor, Edisto centers on one Simons Everson Manigault, a twelve-year-old possessed of a vocabulary and sophistication way beyond his years and a preadolescent bewilderment with the behavior of adults. These include his mother, who is known as the Duchess, and his enigmatic father-surrogate, Taurus. Imbued with a strong sense of place?an isolated strip of South Carolina coast called Edisto?Padgett Powell's novel is "a tour de force ... Some turn a phase, some flash of humor, some freshly observed detail, some accurately rendered perception of a child's pain or a child's amazement, transfigures every page" ... --Cover, p. 4.

Themes & subjects