I AM CLARENCE

by Elaine Kraf ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 12, 1969

Miss Kraf is a teacher of the disabled and sometimes one feels that she has amalgamated the complete caseload of her young experience in one book where, even if misery does not love company, misery can only find it in others of wretched condition. Thus here all of life's rejects--physical and emotional--centering around a young woman who has an aphasic child Clarence, malformed and hairy at birth, hairless later and given to seizures. She also has a brother Elliot who never moves out of his house (watching television and cooking) but can take care of Clarence when she signs herself into an institution, is given shock treatment, refuses to find an identity. ""I am Clarence."" Then there are the men who drift in and out of her life: Clarence's father, a singing waiter who commits suicide; circus freaks; a phantom who professes to be a professor; and Clarence's only contact, a mongoloid... This is all told through various first persons of exposed and heightened sensibilities. For whom it is hard to say although it is handled with infinite care.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 1969

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1969

Categories: FICTION