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American Novels #1
The Boy in His Winter: An American Novel
Launched into existence by Mark Twain, Huck Finn and Jim have now been transported by Norman Lock through three vital, violent, and transformative centuries of American history. As time unfurls on the river’s banks, they witness decisive battles of the Civil War, the betrayal of Reconstruction’s promises to the freed slaves, the crushing of Native American nations, and the electrification of a continent. Huck, who finally comes of age when he’s washed up on shore during Hurricane Katrina, narrates the story as an older and wiser man in 2077, revealing our nation’s past, present, and future as Mark Twain could never have dreamed it.
The Boy in His Winter is a tour-de-force work of imagination, beauty, and courage that re-envisions a great American literary classic for our time.
Norman Lock, a recipient of the Aga Khan Prize from The Paris Review and a writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, is the author of many works of fiction, including Love Among the Particles. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey.
The Boy in His Winter is a tour-de-force work of imagination, beauty, and courage that re-envisions a great American literary classic for our time.
Norman Lock, a recipient of the Aga Khan Prize from The Paris Review and a writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, is the author of many works of fiction, including Love Among the Particles. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey.
192 pages, Paperback
First published April 21, 2014
40 people are currently reading
622 people want to read
About the author
Norman Lock
45 books41 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.
Norman Lock has written novels, short fiction, and poetry as well as stage plays, dramas for German radio, a film for The American Film Institute, and scenarios for video-art installations. His plays have been produced in the U.S., Germany, at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, and in Turkey. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, Turkish, and Japanese.
He received the Aga Kahn Prize, given by The Paris Review, the Literary Fiction Prize, given by The Dactyl Foundation of the Arts & Humanities, fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and from the National Endowment for the Arts. (source: http://www.normanlock.com/)
Norman Lock has written novels, short fiction, and poetry as well as stage plays, dramas for German radio, a film for The American Film Institute, and scenarios for video-art installations. His plays have been produced in the U.S., Germany, at the Edinburgh Theatre Festival, and in Turkey. His work has been translated into Dutch, German, Spanish, Turkish, and Japanese.
He received the Aga Kahn Prize, given by The Paris Review, the Literary Fiction Prize, given by The Dactyl Foundation of the Arts & Humanities, fellowships from the New Jersey Council on the Arts, the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, and from the National Endowment for the Arts. (source: http://www.normanlock.com/)
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May 28, 2016
Rating: 3.75* of five
New review! THE BOY IN HIS WINTER http://tinyurl.com/gq7dc6d
Review posted at The Small Press Book Review by literary gatekeeper Mel Bosworth, arbiter of good taste and merit. Clearly he must be, because he publishes my reviews.
This is one of three loosely linked novels by
Norman Lock and published by the amazing folks at Bellevue Literary Press. I'll be reviewing them all before publication day for the third one,
THE PORT-WINE STAIN, due out in June.
The full review is finally here, followed by the second of the five novels' review AMERICAN METEOR!
Review of Norman Lock’s THE BOY IN HIS WINTER: An American Novel
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The Boy in His Winter: An American Novel
Norman Lock. Bellevue Literary Press, $14.95 paperback (192 pages) ISBN: 978-1-934137-76-5
Repurposing great works of literature, famous characters from same, and/or dead authors in modern ways and to modern ends is almost overdone as a phenomenon. Really, writers. Stop it.
I said "almost overdone" because, if I know publishing at all, they will collectively ride this hobby-horse's hooves entirely off. There are a few of these cultural appropriations that are enjoyable, of course, it's statistically impossible that such a gigantic amount of work won't produce a shining light now and then. I think of Catherynne Valente's Russian fairy-tale reinterpretation of Baba Yaga in Deathless and grin all over my face. So the tap will continue to drip even after the shower's over. It ain't over yet, though.
It's in that silver river-shine light that I approached The Boy in His Winter. Is this another misappropriation or maladaptation of a novel that's been entwined into the USA's sense of itself? Happily, no...but.
I love author Lock's prose (my copy of the book has 10 Book Darts marking especially lovely passages or especially telling insights). It slides easy, inviting toes to dangle or shoulders to float, gently rocking.
That these complex and honeyed words are put in crude, ill-bred Huck Finn's mouth works because we're told from the get-go that he's an old man now and telling his story to an unnamed, depersonalized amanuensis. And I wonder, since the novel's frame is 2077, if that amanuensis isn't some form of AI, which might also account for the fact that Huck (now called Albert, or Al, since rejoining normal time after Katrina) always addresses the unseen being as if responding to questions. Much like a good writer's-amanuensis software would program it to do: "Comes complete with wandering-thought alert and long-silence breaker!"
That I'm conjecturing this, since I wasn't told or shown it in any way, is a source of my itchy lack of satisfaction with the book as a whole. Huck and Jim get on their stolen raft in 1835 and float, magically out of time's reach, until certain points in history, national and personal. I can go there. I can love the trip. My disbelief is suspended from the moment I open this kind of book. But when all the author does with my suspended disbelief is take advantage of it so as not to have to work at explaining his authorial choices...well, pop goes the weasel and here I am with my teeth in my mouth wondering what I was thinking when I started this sentence:
I read the author's mind (always a dangerous act) to hear, "I'll make a classical allusion to magical transformations and maybe they'll glide on by the Hows and gaze lovingly at the Whys." Now, don't mistake me, I'm not asking Lock to invent some hard-SF gobbledygook that doesn't belong in this book. What I'm left wanting is a Why that has the power to cause Huck to introspect all through the book, to meditate on the nature of his and Jim's unique experience and how it's made him who and what he is.
Don't know about you, but I could use more of this beautiful revelation and on many more topics. Again, I stress that I don't want the book to be something it isn't, some Guide To Life or some kind of Aliens Messed With My Tachyon Bodyspace. I love the concept as it's written. But it isn't doing enough of what it does so well to merit the full five stars I begin by giving every book I am seduced into picking up.
Bellevue Literary Press is to be commended for publishing this life-intersecting-science story in such a beautiful, well-crafted package. Norman Lock is Norman Lock, and doesn't need the likes of me to praise his talent, demonstrated so amply so very often in a long career. (May 2014)
Yet I wanted more than I got of the sweetness he gave.
New review! THE BOY IN HIS WINTER http://tinyurl.com/gq7dc6d
Review posted at The Small Press Book Review by literary gatekeeper Mel Bosworth, arbiter of good taste and merit. Clearly he must be, because he publishes my reviews.
This is one of three loosely linked novels by
Norman Lock and published by the amazing folks at Bellevue Literary Press. I'll be reviewing them all before publication day for the third one,
THE PORT-WINE STAIN, due out in June.The full review is finally here, followed by the second of the five novels' review AMERICAN METEOR!
Review of Norman Lock’s THE BOY IN HIS WINTER: An American Novel
Norman Lock. Bellevue Literary Press, $14.95 paperback (192 pages) ISBN: 978-1-934137-76-5
Repurposing great works of literature, famous characters from same, and/or dead authors in modern ways and to modern ends is almost overdone as a phenomenon. Really, writers. Stop it.
I said "almost overdone" because, if I know publishing at all, they will collectively ride this hobby-horse's hooves entirely off. There are a few of these cultural appropriations that are enjoyable, of course, it's statistically impossible that such a gigantic amount of work won't produce a shining light now and then. I think of Catherynne Valente's Russian fairy-tale reinterpretation of Baba Yaga in Deathless and grin all over my face. So the tap will continue to drip even after the shower's over. It ain't over yet, though.
It's in that silver river-shine light that I approached The Boy in His Winter. Is this another misappropriation or maladaptation of a novel that's been entwined into the USA's sense of itself? Happily, no...but.
I love author Lock's prose (my copy of the book has 10 Book Darts marking especially lovely passages or especially telling insights). It slides easy, inviting toes to dangle or shoulders to float, gently rocking.
To ennoble is to diminish by robbing people of their complexity, their completeness, of their humanity, which is always clouded by what gets stirred up at the bottom.
That these complex and honeyed words are put in crude, ill-bred Huck Finn's mouth works because we're told from the get-go that he's an old man now and telling his story to an unnamed, depersonalized amanuensis. And I wonder, since the novel's frame is 2077, if that amanuensis isn't some form of AI, which might also account for the fact that Huck (now called Albert, or Al, since rejoining normal time after Katrina) always addresses the unseen being as if responding to questions. Much like a good writer's-amanuensis software would program it to do: "Comes complete with wandering-thought alert and long-silence breaker!"
That I'm conjecturing this, since I wasn't told or shown it in any way, is a source of my itchy lack of satisfaction with the book as a whole. Huck and Jim get on their stolen raft in 1835 and float, magically out of time's reach, until certain points in history, national and personal. I can go there. I can love the trip. My disbelief is suspended from the moment I open this kind of book. But when all the author does with my suspended disbelief is take advantage of it so as not to have to work at explaining his authorial choices...well, pop goes the weasel and here I am with my teeth in my mouth wondering what I was thinking when I started this sentence:
The raft was seized, with a noise like needles knitting, and we were hemmed in for winter -- river and the old channel's oxbow lake having frozen solid. By now, we guessed we were not two ordinary river travelers...it must have been the river that was extraordinary: a marvel that protected us by the same mysterious action that had given a common horse wings and changed a woman into a laurel tree.
I read the author's mind (always a dangerous act) to hear, "I'll make a classical allusion to magical transformations and maybe they'll glide on by the Hows and gaze lovingly at the Whys." Now, don't mistake me, I'm not asking Lock to invent some hard-SF gobbledygook that doesn't belong in this book. What I'm left wanting is a Why that has the power to cause Huck to introspect all through the book, to meditate on the nature of his and Jim's unique experience and how it's made him who and what he is.
{Y}ou make do with what you're given, and I've spent a good many years learning to write fine-sounding sentences so that I can hide behind them. It's the way of the hermit crab, with nothing to recommend it but the pretty shell it annexes for its own.
Don't know about you, but I could use more of this beautiful revelation and on many more topics. Again, I stress that I don't want the book to be something it isn't, some Guide To Life or some kind of Aliens Messed With My Tachyon Bodyspace. I love the concept as it's written. But it isn't doing enough of what it does so well to merit the full five stars I begin by giving every book I am seduced into picking up.
Bellevue Literary Press is to be commended for publishing this life-intersecting-science story in such a beautiful, well-crafted package. Norman Lock is Norman Lock, and doesn't need the likes of me to praise his talent, demonstrated so amply so very often in a long career. (May 2014)
Yet I wanted more than I got of the sweetness he gave.
June 7, 2018
In the year 2077 Huck Finn reflects back on his life, beginning in 1835 when he and the escaped slave Jim began their raft journey down the Mississippi River. Somehow they became time travelers until Hurricane Katrina shipwrecked Huck back into passing time.
Along the way, they saw America caught in wars, the marvel of electric lighting, and how racism kept its grip on society.
Jim got off the raft in 1960, finding a lynch mob waiting for him. In 2005 Huck meets James, who tries to keep him from harm. As an adult, Huck falls in love with Jameson, who becomes his wife. She writes a novel, The Boy In His Winter. Like Jim, James and Jameson are African American.
What Huck realizes from his vantage point of 85 years is how badly he treated Jim, how he accepted his society's values unthinking, diminishing Jim as a person and as a friend.
"I was bothered that I had come to hate him, bothered even more that I had loved him. I'm not sure that I regarded him then as a man. Not entirely. That broad view of humanity was alien to a mind that had been formed haphazardly, like a shack put together out of old lumber, warped and ill-used.(...)We'd wasted much time when we might have understood what was happening on the raft while we were close in on the river's end, which as not to be the journey's end, as I learned later." Huck Finn, A Boy in His Winter
At the end of his life, Huck returns to his hometown to play act Mark Twain, telling his own life stories. Huck calls his story a comedy, having seen enough for 'three or four lifetimes."
"Haven't you learned by now how fantastic a business it is to be alive?"-Huck Finn, A Boy in His Winter
The novel is episodic, meandering as the Mississippi River, but I was charmed by Huck's narrative, although there is nothing of innocence to be found. Huck is deformed by societal values, pursuing wealth and conspicuous consumption as an adult as thoughtlessly as he accepted slavery in his youth. With a broad overview of American history distilled into one lifetime, and grappling with memory and how the past is altered with our storytelling of it, Huck's tale shows the darkness behind what we remember as Twain's story of boyish freedom.
I received a book from the publisher as part of a LibraryThing giveaway.
Along the way, they saw America caught in wars, the marvel of electric lighting, and how racism kept its grip on society.
Jim got off the raft in 1960, finding a lynch mob waiting for him. In 2005 Huck meets James, who tries to keep him from harm. As an adult, Huck falls in love with Jameson, who becomes his wife. She writes a novel, The Boy In His Winter. Like Jim, James and Jameson are African American.
What Huck realizes from his vantage point of 85 years is how badly he treated Jim, how he accepted his society's values unthinking, diminishing Jim as a person and as a friend.
"I was bothered that I had come to hate him, bothered even more that I had loved him. I'm not sure that I regarded him then as a man. Not entirely. That broad view of humanity was alien to a mind that had been formed haphazardly, like a shack put together out of old lumber, warped and ill-used.(...)We'd wasted much time when we might have understood what was happening on the raft while we were close in on the river's end, which as not to be the journey's end, as I learned later." Huck Finn, A Boy in His Winter
At the end of his life, Huck returns to his hometown to play act Mark Twain, telling his own life stories. Huck calls his story a comedy, having seen enough for 'three or four lifetimes."
"Haven't you learned by now how fantastic a business it is to be alive?"-Huck Finn, A Boy in His Winter
The novel is episodic, meandering as the Mississippi River, but I was charmed by Huck's narrative, although there is nothing of innocence to be found. Huck is deformed by societal values, pursuing wealth and conspicuous consumption as an adult as thoughtlessly as he accepted slavery in his youth. With a broad overview of American history distilled into one lifetime, and grappling with memory and how the past is altered with our storytelling of it, Huck's tale shows the darkness behind what we remember as Twain's story of boyish freedom.
I received a book from the publisher as part of a LibraryThing giveaway.
August 4, 2016
I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads, and am grateful for the opportunity.
To write a sequel to a classic novel is a daunting task on its own, and to give the original tale, rooted in reality, otherworldly elements only increases the danger. Yet Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn built their legends off taking risks.
As one who has read much of Twain's writings, including both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, I found some of the changes from Twain's canon to be somewhat unsettling. The changing of the entire river trip from its very origin back in Hannibal throws everything out of the water, and as a result I found later references to adventures such as with the supposed Duke to be puzzling.
The plot seemed to have less consistency compared with the original work. There was the fateful trip down the river, then the events once the time travel stopped, and finally the third section. I found the last part to be the most jarring, since it just didn't seem right to me to leap forward all those years and conclude on that note. The third part seemed unnecessary in my opinion, and could be blended in with part two.
I liked how the story brought more character to Jim. On the other hand, I think he might have lost some parts of his character that stood out in the original classic.
The lack of the vivid, diverse vernacular languages I have grown accustomed to in Twain's works was jarring, and I just felt the language in the book was a little disappointing.
Most of all, Huck's divergence from his original character in the book left me uneasy. He had a very interesting personality in the original, and his outright rejection of Twain's portrayal hurt in a way.
On the other hand, Huck did retain many qualities that let me see him as Huckleberry Finn. I can kind of understand and forgive his hatred for Twain, as he is trying to break free of the limits imposed on fiction and prove himself as a living being. Much of the adventure still had the sort of feel I get from reading Twain. Although this book may not be the best tribute to Mark Twain's original piece, it is still a good extension of the original story, one that continues to explore fundamental parts of humanity. I enjoyed the long journey down the river, and feel that I learned something from the adventure, just as I did from Twain's original story.
As for grammatical issues, I found nothing seriously wrong. This is very well-written for an advance copy, and I believe that the final version will be even better.
To write a sequel to a classic novel is a daunting task on its own, and to give the original tale, rooted in reality, otherworldly elements only increases the danger. Yet Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn built their legends off taking risks.
As one who has read much of Twain's writings, including both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, I found some of the changes from Twain's canon to be somewhat unsettling. The changing of the entire river trip from its very origin back in Hannibal throws everything out of the water, and as a result I found later references to adventures such as with the supposed Duke to be puzzling.
The plot seemed to have less consistency compared with the original work. There was the fateful trip down the river, then the events once the time travel stopped, and finally the third section. I found the last part to be the most jarring, since it just didn't seem right to me to leap forward all those years and conclude on that note. The third part seemed unnecessary in my opinion, and could be blended in with part two.
I liked how the story brought more character to Jim. On the other hand, I think he might have lost some parts of his character that stood out in the original classic.
The lack of the vivid, diverse vernacular languages I have grown accustomed to in Twain's works was jarring, and I just felt the language in the book was a little disappointing.
Most of all, Huck's divergence from his original character in the book left me uneasy. He had a very interesting personality in the original, and his outright rejection of Twain's portrayal hurt in a way.
On the other hand, Huck did retain many qualities that let me see him as Huckleberry Finn. I can kind of understand and forgive his hatred for Twain, as he is trying to break free of the limits imposed on fiction and prove himself as a living being. Much of the adventure still had the sort of feel I get from reading Twain. Although this book may not be the best tribute to Mark Twain's original piece, it is still a good extension of the original story, one that continues to explore fundamental parts of humanity. I enjoyed the long journey down the river, and feel that I learned something from the adventure, just as I did from Twain's original story.
As for grammatical issues, I found nothing seriously wrong. This is very well-written for an advance copy, and I believe that the final version will be even better.
July 14, 2014
Intriguing premise: a time-traveling Huck Finn sequel, spanning more than two centuries! But the execution felt somewhat lacking; after 35 pages, I still wasn’t hooked. I did enjoy this older, wiser Huck’s voice: “You say I have a duty to readers to flesh out my story. Sorry, but I find such fleshing-out to be tedious and beside the point. You want to know what my point is in all this? I’m not sure. You see I am, at least, honest.” Okay, but if readers are to make it very far, there’s going to need to be a clear direction, with some action to back up the adventurous storyline promised.
It’s a fun postmodern approach: “You’re about to object that it did not happen this way. In fact, my story seems more and more inclined to go its own way, with small regard for the truth. ... Does anyone know how it happened? Do you? Did Mark Twain? Did it really happen at all? ... It’s to be my book, after all. Later, you can write your own version.” But this is the kind of book I tend to label as too clever for its own good.
(Anyone who managed to make it through to the end, feel free to correct me and make a case for the novel’s merit!)
It’s a fun postmodern approach: “You’re about to object that it did not happen this way. In fact, my story seems more and more inclined to go its own way, with small regard for the truth. ... Does anyone know how it happened? Do you? Did Mark Twain? Did it really happen at all? ... It’s to be my book, after all. Later, you can write your own version.” But this is the kind of book I tend to label as too clever for its own good.
(Anyone who managed to make it through to the end, feel free to correct me and make a case for the novel’s merit!)
May 18, 2014
Super! Here's my review for NPR.org:
http://www.npr.org/2014/05/15/3121906...
http://www.npr.org/2014/05/15/3121906...
May 29, 2014
neat imagining if huck and jim did not stop and get off their raft, but rather just kept going, time out of time. so now, in 2077 huck relates the "rest of the story". not a whole lot happens in this novel, as the narrator loathed mark twain's style of one (mis)adventure after nother with no real significance to the characters he created and the world he put them in. so here are 2 excerpts, one illustrating huck's ambivalence to 'huckleberry finn" and the other a mention of libraries, cuz? i collect library mentions from literature. everybody needs a hobby.
some highlights too of this novel for me: huck falls in love with a woman from santa monica, a childrens book author/illustrator who he thinks might, just might, really be jim in transformation ; the genius of smuggling dope in the aftermath of hurricane katrina when law was busy helping civilians ; the reality of living into the 21st centrury and ones reaction to all the extinct animals one used to eat with relish, but are sadly just a memory. and though 2014 novels seem waaay too long, this novel could have been 900 pages, easy.
from page 29 and 64
“At Cape Girardeau, on a bend of the Mississippi between St. Louis and Memphis, the river water, which had fattened with heavy rains in nebraska and iowa, caught up to us. Thick brown ropes of water knotted all around the raft, but we went on, untouched by the upheaval. Around us, the weather was faultess. We lay on the rough deck, sunning ourselves. We might have fished up great whales from the bottom, so magical the day seemed, though the sky above the shore to either side of us was dark and solemn, as if that afternoon were the first Good Friday, and we, two careless centurions throwing dice. We could not have known we were in the eye of a storm, surrounded everywhere by rising water, if not for trees, stumps, the walls and roofs of houses, and the bloated cows sweeeping past us. That was 1851, the year of the Great Flood. (Another darkness, far ahead, and far more terrible, waited downriver for me.)’
“……..But I liked the title of the book he’d been reading and took it with me: The Time Machine, by Mr. H. G. Wells. How very like Tom Sawyer to own such a tale of outlandish adventure! I realized when I was back on the raft that he had borrowed it from the Baton Rouge Public Library. I’m ashamed to say, it is long overdue. I’ve read the story many times since then and never fail to picture the Time Traveler as Tom himself, how he looked on the skiff, coming toward me from the General Sumter.
Yes, I’d been taught to read haltingly, in Hannibal by Miss Waston and Widow Douglas as part of their campaign to civilize me.
I thought the book was a sign---not a bad omen, but a harbinger of good fortune; that it was a guarantee of safe conduct through the streets of Baton Rouge, which Tom had consecrated by having lived ther and having also died there ( which the more powerful juju, I could not know). My ideas were hazy and unformed about the meaning of Jim’s and my journey downriver, but I guessed it had something to do with time travel. If not, why was Tom and old man while I was still a boy?”
some highlights too of this novel for me: huck falls in love with a woman from santa monica, a childrens book author/illustrator who he thinks might, just might, really be jim in transformation ; the genius of smuggling dope in the aftermath of hurricane katrina when law was busy helping civilians ; the reality of living into the 21st centrury and ones reaction to all the extinct animals one used to eat with relish, but are sadly just a memory. and though 2014 novels seem waaay too long, this novel could have been 900 pages, easy.
from page 29 and 64
“At Cape Girardeau, on a bend of the Mississippi between St. Louis and Memphis, the river water, which had fattened with heavy rains in nebraska and iowa, caught up to us. Thick brown ropes of water knotted all around the raft, but we went on, untouched by the upheaval. Around us, the weather was faultess. We lay on the rough deck, sunning ourselves. We might have fished up great whales from the bottom, so magical the day seemed, though the sky above the shore to either side of us was dark and solemn, as if that afternoon were the first Good Friday, and we, two careless centurions throwing dice. We could not have known we were in the eye of a storm, surrounded everywhere by rising water, if not for trees, stumps, the walls and roofs of houses, and the bloated cows sweeeping past us. That was 1851, the year of the Great Flood. (Another darkness, far ahead, and far more terrible, waited downriver for me.)’
“……..But I liked the title of the book he’d been reading and took it with me: The Time Machine, by Mr. H. G. Wells. How very like Tom Sawyer to own such a tale of outlandish adventure! I realized when I was back on the raft that he had borrowed it from the Baton Rouge Public Library. I’m ashamed to say, it is long overdue. I’ve read the story many times since then and never fail to picture the Time Traveler as Tom himself, how he looked on the skiff, coming toward me from the General Sumter.
Yes, I’d been taught to read haltingly, in Hannibal by Miss Waston and Widow Douglas as part of their campaign to civilize me.
I thought the book was a sign---not a bad omen, but a harbinger of good fortune; that it was a guarantee of safe conduct through the streets of Baton Rouge, which Tom had consecrated by having lived ther and having also died there ( which the more powerful juju, I could not know). My ideas were hazy and unformed about the meaning of Jim’s and my journey downriver, but I guessed it had something to do with time travel. If not, why was Tom and old man while I was still a boy?”
May 8, 2014
I’d been itching to read Norman Lock’s The Boy in His Winter: An American Novel since the moment I heard about its premise: Huck Finn and Jim sail down the Mississippi and along time, arriving in New Orleans as Hurricane Katrina hits. This synopsis (who knows where or how I absorbed it) isn’t really accurate. Yes, Huck and Jim are on a raft. Yes, the raft passes through the edge of Katrina. But The Boy in His Winter is much more complex in its aspirations.
Rather than offering a quick one-line summary that includes only a small part of the book’s overall narrative, it might be more useful to look at the publisher releasing the book. In this case, the publisher is Bellevue Literary Press (BLP), which bills itself as “the first and only nonprofit press dedicated to literary fiction and nonfiction at the intersection of the arts and sciences.” BLP hopes to “promote science literacy in unaccustomed ways and offer new tools for thinking about our world.” This isn’t a Huck-meets-Katrina book; it’s a much more metaphysical work that questions the nature of time while traversing key moments in American history.
I enjoyed this book at the beginning. Huck, now very old and near dying, is recounting his story to an anonymous amanuensis. He wanders a bit, he cogitates, he questions as much as tells: “Of course, I reckon time differently now than we did then, sweeping down the Mississippi toward Mexico as though in a dream. Those days did seem like a dream, though not mine, or Jim’s, either, but one belonging to somebody whose hand I almost felt, prodding me onward in spite of my reluctance.” That’s rich language, the kind one wants to read aloud for the pleasure of feeling it roll about in one’s mouth.
As the book progressed and the metaphysical pondering continued, I grew less charmed. The prose was still lovely, but as I read I felt as though I was waiting for someone or something to appear that, Godot-like, never showed its face. What I was longing for, I think, was the physical Huck, the boy of flesh and blood. Yes, Huck was a thinker, but he was also young, vital, alive, and to have this aspect of him jettisoned from the beginning left me frustrated.
Many of Huck’s thoughts—on slavery and race, on friendship and its limits, on the human condition—are interesting. And the book offers some small moments of action: a Civil War battle, the brief glimpse of Katrina, the birth of jazz from southern blues music. Jim, who dies before Huck, reappears in different guises and the reader enjoys seeing him change as his spirit is transported to new eras. But too many of Huck’s thoughts are repetitious, and the blurred depiction of the external world leaves readers anchorless on this float down time and river.
The Boy in His Winter does “promote science literacy in unaccustomed ways,” but the “tools for thinking about our world” are limited: Time is fluid; People do and don’t change. This isn’t so much science literacy as scientific generalization written over and over again.
Rather than offering a quick one-line summary that includes only a small part of the book’s overall narrative, it might be more useful to look at the publisher releasing the book. In this case, the publisher is Bellevue Literary Press (BLP), which bills itself as “the first and only nonprofit press dedicated to literary fiction and nonfiction at the intersection of the arts and sciences.” BLP hopes to “promote science literacy in unaccustomed ways and offer new tools for thinking about our world.” This isn’t a Huck-meets-Katrina book; it’s a much more metaphysical work that questions the nature of time while traversing key moments in American history.
I enjoyed this book at the beginning. Huck, now very old and near dying, is recounting his story to an anonymous amanuensis. He wanders a bit, he cogitates, he questions as much as tells: “Of course, I reckon time differently now than we did then, sweeping down the Mississippi toward Mexico as though in a dream. Those days did seem like a dream, though not mine, or Jim’s, either, but one belonging to somebody whose hand I almost felt, prodding me onward in spite of my reluctance.” That’s rich language, the kind one wants to read aloud for the pleasure of feeling it roll about in one’s mouth.
As the book progressed and the metaphysical pondering continued, I grew less charmed. The prose was still lovely, but as I read I felt as though I was waiting for someone or something to appear that, Godot-like, never showed its face. What I was longing for, I think, was the physical Huck, the boy of flesh and blood. Yes, Huck was a thinker, but he was also young, vital, alive, and to have this aspect of him jettisoned from the beginning left me frustrated.
Many of Huck’s thoughts—on slavery and race, on friendship and its limits, on the human condition—are interesting. And the book offers some small moments of action: a Civil War battle, the brief glimpse of Katrina, the birth of jazz from southern blues music. Jim, who dies before Huck, reappears in different guises and the reader enjoys seeing him change as his spirit is transported to new eras. But too many of Huck’s thoughts are repetitious, and the blurred depiction of the external world leaves readers anchorless on this float down time and river.
The Boy in His Winter does “promote science literacy in unaccustomed ways,” but the “tools for thinking about our world” are limited: Time is fluid; People do and don’t change. This isn’t so much science literacy as scientific generalization written over and over again.
July 5, 2014
I really wanted to love this book because the premise is so cool: Huck Finn and Jim are caught in a kind of time warp during their trip down the Mississippi in 1835, and 170 years pass before Huck makes it to the Gulf of Mexico during Hurricane Katrina- still age 13. Huck is telling his story as an old man in the year 2077.
Huck often complains about the way Twain told his story, and insists that he wants to tell it his own way, but admits that his telling of the story isn't the whole truth either, due to the unreliability of words and memory.
I'm not generally a big fan of magical realism, but I really liked it in this book. Yet, overall, the book disappointed me. I felt that more could have been done with Huck as a character, and I wish more had been made of the changes Huck sees in American between 1835 and 2077, and how he adapts to them. One of the best scenes in the book, to me, was the first time Huck and Jim see electric light as they float along the river.
Huck often complains about the way Twain told his story, and insists that he wants to tell it his own way, but admits that his telling of the story isn't the whole truth either, due to the unreliability of words and memory.
I'm not generally a big fan of magical realism, but I really liked it in this book. Yet, overall, the book disappointed me. I felt that more could have been done with Huck as a character, and I wish more had been made of the changes Huck sees in American between 1835 and 2077, and how he adapts to them. One of the best scenes in the book, to me, was the first time Huck and Jim see electric light as they float along the river.
April 10, 2014
Consider this literate, thoughtful, and riveting novel as an alternative history, and in a way, alternative American literature.
Huck and Jim doze off on their raft, and drift through time, bumping up against the Civil War (where Tom Sawyer appears, and later, his surprises are revealed), the Jazz Age, and onto into this century and nearly the next. Jim's fate is in Harper Lee's hands in this book, a twining of history, literature, and American culture in a novel where Norman Lock has grown Huck Finn into a better man than Twain imagined.
Huck and Jim doze off on their raft, and drift through time, bumping up against the Civil War (where Tom Sawyer appears, and later, his surprises are revealed), the Jazz Age, and onto into this century and nearly the next. Jim's fate is in Harper Lee's hands in this book, a twining of history, literature, and American culture in a novel where Norman Lock has grown Huck Finn into a better man than Twain imagined.
April 8, 2020
While any novel involving time travel requires a certain suspension of disbelief, this book requires a suspension of coherent thought. This is a series of forgettable scenes written in needlessly flowery prose, culminating in Huck Finn as a 21st century yacht salesman. Like 'One Hundred Years of Solitude', this is a book best read while stoned.
July 7, 2025
What if the raft that Huck and Jim floated on was a time machine that kept them from aging but swept them down the Mississippi through the passing years?
The Boy in His Winter: An American Novel is the first of Norman Lock's series of twelve American Novels. As such this slim novel of just under 200 pages is quite an ambitious start. It was first published in 2014, so well before James.
Lock quite nicely captures Mark Twain's vernacular in the book:
That other story, Jim’s and mine, about a trip downriver, was true enough. But this, the one I am about to tell, is just as true and even more amazing. You want to know what I mean by “true enough”? I mean that—regardless of how things might have been exaggerated in the telling, how far the truth got stretched—you could always find in the world the same sort of perversity that was set down in his book, only the reality is not so entertaining or picturesque.
While one would expect that a short novel about Huck and Jim in a time machine would be packed with adventure, there was also a whole lot of nothing with and several pearls of wisdom as:
We wanted only our freedom.
We saw it in different lights, but that’s all we wanted.
I don’t know what this book is about, but it feels like it might have something to do with the embarrassing notion of goodness. And its apparent scarcity. Do I believe in it?
I have always fought the treachery of the past, which rises up and makes the present unlivable.
I will leave it to you if you believe you should pick up this book.
The Boy in His Winter: An American Novel is the first of Norman Lock's series of twelve American Novels. As such this slim novel of just under 200 pages is quite an ambitious start. It was first published in 2014, so well before James.
Lock quite nicely captures Mark Twain's vernacular in the book:
That other story, Jim’s and mine, about a trip downriver, was true enough. But this, the one I am about to tell, is just as true and even more amazing. You want to know what I mean by “true enough”? I mean that—regardless of how things might have been exaggerated in the telling, how far the truth got stretched—you could always find in the world the same sort of perversity that was set down in his book, only the reality is not so entertaining or picturesque.
While one would expect that a short novel about Huck and Jim in a time machine would be packed with adventure, there was also a whole lot of nothing with and several pearls of wisdom as:
We wanted only our freedom.
We saw it in different lights, but that’s all we wanted.
I don’t know what this book is about, but it feels like it might have something to do with the embarrassing notion of goodness. And its apparent scarcity. Do I believe in it?
I have always fought the treachery of the past, which rises up and makes the present unlivable.
I will leave it to you if you believe you should pick up this book.
May 18, 2019
A meditation on memory and the nature of storytelling, as told by Huckleberry Finn at the end of his life. Now an old man in the year 2077, Huck explains the river journey he and Jim took from Hannibal, Missouri wasn't just a trip through geography but a trip through time.
March 16, 2014
Lock is a very talented writer. The prose in The Boy in His Winter is fluid, moving the reader organically through the story told by a reimagined Huckleberry Finn. I truly enjoyed the experience of reading Lock's words. However, the story left much to be desired. Lock's premise is an intriguing one -- what if Huck and Jim had been caught in some sort of magical time bubble on their raft ride and floated down the Mississippi for hundreds of years, through events such as the Civil War and Hurricane Katrina?
The execution of this tale is what's lacking. Huck (or Albert Barthelemy, as Huck renames himself after he enters back into the normal space-time continuum) is our narrator and doesn't seem confident about the story he's telling the reader. There are too many interruptions from Huck throughout the narrative and his constant interruptions are comparable to a mosquito buzzing near the ear. Huck is constantly interjecting into and justifying his tale: "It's my book"; "You're about to object"; and "You're claiming I preach too much" are just a few of the many examples of this. A more delft editor should have removed these asides, as they distract the reader from what could have been a very solid story. Another problem I encountered with the narrator was his language. While Twain's original tellings are mired in controversy because of his use of the vernacular at the time, all of that is tossed aside for a tale with nothing but proper English. While this is easier to read, it rang false.
This is not to say that I wasn't entertained. Huck has much on which to reflect in his tale, such as Jim's demise; Tom Sawyer's death; and his adventures as an inadvertent marijuana smuggler with the Connery brothers, Edgar and Edmund, along with James Toussaint. After Jim's death, Huck encounters two "forms" of Jim in James Toussaint and later Jameson, the presumed love of his life (although that portion of the novel feels very rushed).
But at the end of the book, I was left disappointed in the execution.
The execution of this tale is what's lacking. Huck (or Albert Barthelemy, as Huck renames himself after he enters back into the normal space-time continuum) is our narrator and doesn't seem confident about the story he's telling the reader. There are too many interruptions from Huck throughout the narrative and his constant interruptions are comparable to a mosquito buzzing near the ear. Huck is constantly interjecting into and justifying his tale: "It's my book"; "You're about to object"; and "You're claiming I preach too much" are just a few of the many examples of this. A more delft editor should have removed these asides, as they distract the reader from what could have been a very solid story. Another problem I encountered with the narrator was his language. While Twain's original tellings are mired in controversy because of his use of the vernacular at the time, all of that is tossed aside for a tale with nothing but proper English. While this is easier to read, it rang false.
This is not to say that I wasn't entertained. Huck has much on which to reflect in his tale, such as Jim's demise; Tom Sawyer's death; and his adventures as an inadvertent marijuana smuggler with the Connery brothers, Edgar and Edmund, along with James Toussaint. After Jim's death, Huck encounters two "forms" of Jim in James Toussaint and later Jameson, the presumed love of his life (although that portion of the novel feels very rushed).
But at the end of the book, I was left disappointed in the execution.
September 6, 2014
Huck Finn and time travel? How could this NOT be good?!
You'd be surprised at how many ways it could be not good, actually. In this disastrous retelling of "Huckleberry Finn," Huck and Jim travel down the Mississippi and inexplicably leap ahead through time into the 21st century. Although Mr. Lock's poetic prose elevates "Boy" above the mundane, it never seems to SAY anything. How many times can narrator Huck, now an old, mysteriously eloquent man, wonder about the weirdness of time-traveling on a raft? The absurdly short tableaux that the travelers witness when they pause in their journey never tell a story or reveal much. Did Mark Twain, as Huck declares, really make up the events that he told in his version? Why, then, do they seem to be memories for Huck-as-an-old-man? In the grand finale, we get to see Huck as a sidekick in a modern drug deal that goes wrong. But why?
This book smells like a Mississippi catfish, floating belly-up, that has unexplainably flash-forwarded to a future in which it's still dead but is worse for the wear.
You'd be surprised at how many ways it could be not good, actually. In this disastrous retelling of "Huckleberry Finn," Huck and Jim travel down the Mississippi and inexplicably leap ahead through time into the 21st century. Although Mr. Lock's poetic prose elevates "Boy" above the mundane, it never seems to SAY anything. How many times can narrator Huck, now an old, mysteriously eloquent man, wonder about the weirdness of time-traveling on a raft? The absurdly short tableaux that the travelers witness when they pause in their journey never tell a story or reveal much. Did Mark Twain, as Huck declares, really make up the events that he told in his version? Why, then, do they seem to be memories for Huck-as-an-old-man? In the grand finale, we get to see Huck as a sidekick in a modern drug deal that goes wrong. But why?
This book smells like a Mississippi catfish, floating belly-up, that has unexplainably flash-forwarded to a future in which it's still dead but is worse for the wear.
August 28, 2016
the well-washed corpse of the murdered and drowned twain original floating down the river.
i wanted to like this book so much. i loved the premise and what i imagined it could be. instead it is exactly what it sounds like if you take the "american" in "an american novel" to mean white, cis, straight boy experiences hugely significant and communal events in the world as anecdotes and sidenotes to his own individual life (and where every black person huck meets reminds him of jim—and has variations of that name: jim, james, jameson. that is not nearly a clever enough concept to bang us over the head with, norman.)
it seems lock decided that the problem with the original huck was that he got off the raft, entered the world, stood up for jim, and decided to be *about* something. this book is a very effective attempt to erase all of that meaning.
i wanted to like this book so much. i loved the premise and what i imagined it could be. instead it is exactly what it sounds like if you take the "american" in "an american novel" to mean white, cis, straight boy experiences hugely significant and communal events in the world as anecdotes and sidenotes to his own individual life (and where every black person huck meets reminds him of jim—and has variations of that name: jim, james, jameson. that is not nearly a clever enough concept to bang us over the head with, norman.)
it seems lock decided that the problem with the original huck was that he got off the raft, entered the world, stood up for jim, and decided to be *about* something. this book is a very effective attempt to erase all of that meaning.
dnf
May 18, 2014I've had to put this down, for now. I just can't get into the groove. Lock's premise sounds fascinating in the synopsis, but I'm some 20 pages in, and I still have no sense of plot or character. Huck's narration is fragmented and meandering--it's intended to be conversational, as if dictated, and as clever as that may be, it's still necessary to provide a thread of narrative for the reader to follow. After about 12 pages, it finally appears, but it's buried fairly deeply. I'm just not quite in the mood for figuring out why and how Huck and Jim are stuck in an ice age in 1850, just yet, or why they're going to meet Martians in 2070, if I have to fight this hard for it. I may return to this later.
June 9, 2014
This is a strange yet lovely book. Perhaps too lovely. Every sentence is beautifully written, so beautifully written that I read almost every sentence twice. Therein lies the problem. It takes a long time to read a book where you have to read every sentence twice to understand it's meaning. Every once in awhile I need a short sentence with some action going on. The protagonist complained a lot about having been Mark Twain's creation in Huckleberry Finn, but I was left longing for some of the adventures and comedy of Huckleberry Finn.
But, it's a nice premise, that Huckleberry Finn and Jim are caught in never ending time as they float down the Mississippi and witness 150 years of history. But I wish they'd had more adventures in this history, rather than just being witnesses to it.
But, it's a nice premise, that Huckleberry Finn and Jim are caught in never ending time as they float down the Mississippi and witness 150 years of history. But I wish they'd had more adventures in this history, rather than just being witnesses to it.
November 11, 2014
In The Boy In HIs Winter, Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Jim travel on the raft down the Mississippi except that the raft now travels through time. The story is told in the first person by Huck Finn as an octogenarian in the year 2077. While a strange concept, I did like it and thought that it highlighted some of the similarities between the twenty-first century and the nineteenth century. The drug smugglers in the book, for example, weren't really that much different from the pirates and thieves of nineteenth century fiction. Both were cold, hard men who were using illegal means to rise above their class and circumstance.
December 2, 2014
So, how do I begin? This is a most unusual book. Not sure I've ever read anything like it. Sort of sci-fi, sort of historical, sort of fiction, sort of memoir (of a fictional character, or is he?), definitely time travel. I did enjoy it though simply because it was so different. Have always been a huge fan of Mark Twain, hence my interest in the book. Only aspect I didn't like was that the last section seemed like an add-on. I think the author could have treated the last section better or skipped it altogether; it held no spell for me. Slogged through it but fortunately it wasn't a long section. I do recommend it for anyone looking for a novel "out of the box".
July 20, 2014
This book has an intriguing premise, and I quite enjoyed the philosophical musings of Huck in Norman Lock's hands. There's lots here on the nature of memory, mortality, etc. But, like a raft on the Mississippi, the story is meandering and listless. Huck barely skirts Hurricane Katrina (never making it into New Orleans proper), and then the story is off in other, inexplicable directions. I found some details of the story to be interesting and funny, but it lacked an overall trajectory and impact.
May 29, 2014
I thought this book had some great promise with a premise that just seemed extremely intriguing, but unfortunately, I thought the writing was too verbose and there really wasn't a story being told. There was no way to connect all the various actions that happened and not enough story around the smaller actions. The book probably would have been better at about twice the size with more connecting tissues and stories.
October 10, 2014
I received this book for free through LibraryThing Early Reviewers, and am grateful for the opportunity.
The concept of this book is intriguing! I really enjoyed the writing of Lock, yet somehow I just didn't love this book. Parts were interesting and kept my attention, and then, others fell flat. It was a true 3 stars for me. I liked it, yet didn't love it.
The concept of this book is intriguing! I really enjoyed the writing of Lock, yet somehow I just didn't love this book. Parts were interesting and kept my attention, and then, others fell flat. It was a true 3 stars for me. I liked it, yet didn't love it.
September 23, 2014
I really wanted to like this book because The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is one of my all-time favorites, but something about it just seemed disrespectful to me. Disrespectful to the iconic character, and disrespectful to Mark Twain himself. I doubt that was the author's intent, but it certainly came across that way.
August 7, 2014
Meh. Like many other reviewers on here, I found the premise absolutely fascinating but the execution a little lacking. The narration was divergent at its best and meandering indulgences as its worst. Not my favorite, but it had its enjoyable moments.
May 25, 2014
Interesting premise and sorrowful reflection on progress that doesn't accomplish much, warm showers aside.
July 1, 2014
Didn't finish this book, ended up falling to sleep each time I picked it up. Maybe I will try again latter, I have too many books on my to read shelve that are ready and waiting
July 2, 2014
This was a rather slow and boring read. I just couldn't get interested in it. A little too much old man rambling for me. Not enough on the time travel part.
August 14, 2014
Ambitious but problematic.
August 29, 2014
Interesting concept, but it was a very slow book and the narrator's arrogance was annoying. I nearly stopped reading it many times.
September 20, 2014
Found this tedious after a while.
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