Jim Cherry's Blog - Posts Tagged "richard-holeman"
Review of First Boy on the Moon
Richard Holeman seems to be building a canon of novels that explore small towns or even just sections of neighborhoods that are, in a sense, their own small self-contained towns. In the First Boy on the Moon, Holeman has given us a world that is reminiscent of Huckleberry Finn not only in tone but in driving the characters. I don’t know if Holeman was trying for Huckleberry Finn but there are some equivalents.
The first thing that caught me off guard is there are a few scenes that describe what would be considered even then (the novel is set in the 70’s) as child abuse. That’s when the Huck Finn analogy occurred to me, what set Huck off on his adventures was the abuse of his drunken father in what amounts to a custody dispute, until the boy escapes to the wilds of the Mississippi river. Same sorts of issues just a different century. The main character in the First Boy on the Moon Richie and his friends escape their all too real worlds to the wilderness near their apartment building, although, the wilderness now has a shopping mall around the corner from it. The First Boy on the Moon has a lot of experiences common to childhood, and readers minds will fire off memories from their own childhoods and similar equivalent events.
Richard Holeman has a way to make the even the most everyday experience seem extraordinary, shows us how to see what we consider mundane, as interesting if only we didn’t take it for granted, and the reader always wants to find out what will happen next. Even though the First Boy on the Moon has its darker moments (mostly when adults intrude into their world) there’s always a sense of hope and the magic of life and our childhood Edens.
The first thing that caught me off guard is there are a few scenes that describe what would be considered even then (the novel is set in the 70’s) as child abuse. That’s when the Huck Finn analogy occurred to me, what set Huck off on his adventures was the abuse of his drunken father in what amounts to a custody dispute, until the boy escapes to the wilds of the Mississippi river. Same sorts of issues just a different century. The main character in the First Boy on the Moon Richie and his friends escape their all too real worlds to the wilderness near their apartment building, although, the wilderness now has a shopping mall around the corner from it. The First Boy on the Moon has a lot of experiences common to childhood, and readers minds will fire off memories from their own childhoods and similar equivalent events.
Richard Holeman has a way to make the even the most everyday experience seem extraordinary, shows us how to see what we consider mundane, as interesting if only we didn’t take it for granted, and the reader always wants to find out what will happen next. Even though the First Boy on the Moon has its darker moments (mostly when adults intrude into their world) there’s always a sense of hope and the magic of life and our childhood Edens.
