Boy's Life by Robert R. McGammon

Boy's Life

by Robert R. McGammon

Don't miss the thrilling novel from #1 New York Times bestselling award-winning author Robert McCammon, in a book that Publishers Weekly calls "both a mystery that will satisfy the most finicky aficionado and a boisterous travelogue."

Zephyr, Alabama, is an idyllic hometown for eleven-year-old Cory Mackenson--a place where monsters swim the river deep and friends are forever. Then, one cold spring morning, Cory and his father witness a car plunge into a lake--and a desperate rescue attempt brings his father face-to-face with a terrible vision of death that will haunt him forever.

As Cory struggles to understand his father's pain, his eyes are slowly opened to the forces of good and evil that are manifested in Zephyr. From an ancient, mystical woman who can hear the dead and bewitch the living, to a violent clan of moonshiners, Cory must confront the secrets that hide in the shadows of his hometown--for his father's sanity and his own life hang in the balance.

Reviewed by brokentune on

4 of 5 stars

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See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls.

Boy’s Life is one of those books that is difficult to describe. It has a plot that is nearly impossible to summarise. The best description I have read of Boy’s Life so far is that is purely magical.

I should really leave it at that. Nothing I can tell you about Cory, the boy in question, and his growing up in small-town Alabama in the early 1960’s will tell you much about the complexities of characters – from wild west gun slingers to every day milkmen to larger than life old ladies – or the mysteries, grief, love, kindness, and adventure Cory encounters in this book.

That’s where I’ll leave it.

There are things much worse than monster movies. There are horrors that burst the bounds of screen and page, and come home all twisted up and grinning behind the face of somebody you love.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 1 October, 2016: Finished reading
  • 1 October, 2016: Reviewed