"the boys of my youth is what would happen if we were capable of simultaneously experiencing our lives and imbuing the banality of it—of best friendships, of divorce & last moments, of mothers & daughters & sisters & wives—with the meaning we would find in hindsight. i was right there with jo ann (that's right, we're on a first name basis) sneaking out of houses, driving back roads, losing my breath in her living room. beard captures all those beautiful moments that make a life full of magic."
Publisher Back Bay Books
Publication Date 1999-01-29
Section Biography / Essays / All Staff Suggestions / Nonfiction Suggestions / Nathalie B.
Format Paperback
ISBN 9780316085250
The "utterly compelling, uncommonly beautiful" collection of personal essays (Newsweek) that established Jo Ann Beard as one of the leading writers of her generation.
Cousins, mothers, sisters, dolls, dogs, best friends: these are the fixed points in Jo Ann Beard's universe, the constants that remain when the boys of her youth -- and then men who replace them -- are gone. This widely praised collection of autobiographical essays summons back, with astonishing grace and power, moments of childhood epiphany as well as the cataclysms of adult life: betrayal, divorce, death.
The Boys of My Youth heralded the arrival of an immensely gifted and influential writer and its essays remain surprising, original, and affecting today.
"A luminous, funny, heartbreaking book of essays about life and its defining moments." --Harper's Bazaar
