A review by anitaofplaybooktag
Jim the Boy by Tony Earley
3.0
I am very torn about what rating to give this book. The story is about a young boy, Jim, who is being raised by a single mother and her three brothers during the depression era in the South. On one hand, it is very well written. Earley has a masterful and evocative writing style. You can picture everything he describes, and his writing is very fresh. He just brings the story of Jim to life in a beautiful way. There is nothing about the story that is forced or contrived. It's a simple tale, and you can finish this book in a day or two (I know because I did, and I'm not an especially fast reader).
So why not five stars? Or at least four?
Well, I just felt like the story was a little too simple for my taste. It is a tale you could easily read aloud to a child. It could end up being a classic, but it really seems more like a series of short stories about Jim's life, and somehow the plotting was just too simple to really make me say "Wow!" at the end. The narrative does move along at a nice pace, but at the end, I just sort felt like, "oh, that was a lovely little tale.". And "a lovely little tale" just doesn't make me want to give it 5 stars.
This book is not one I'd choose, but my face to face book club is reading it as part of All Rochester Reads, where the whole town reads the same book. I just prefer more complexity to my books and characters. Jim is well developed, but no one else really is. It really just seemed like a platform to show how well Earley can evoke images without using a single stale word. Good for him! Now, if he'd just take it to another level plot wise, I'd think he was truly a masterful genius.
So why not five stars? Or at least four?
Well, I just felt like the story was a little too simple for my taste. It is a tale you could easily read aloud to a child. It could end up being a classic, but it really seems more like a series of short stories about Jim's life, and somehow the plotting was just too simple to really make me say "Wow!" at the end. The narrative does move along at a nice pace, but at the end, I just sort felt like, "oh, that was a lovely little tale.". And "a lovely little tale" just doesn't make me want to give it 5 stars.
This book is not one I'd choose, but my face to face book club is reading it as part of All Rochester Reads, where the whole town reads the same book. I just prefer more complexity to my books and characters. Jim is well developed, but no one else really is. It really just seemed like a platform to show how well Earley can evoke images without using a single stale word. Good for him! Now, if he'd just take it to another level plot wise, I'd think he was truly a masterful genius.