MORNING, WINTER AND NIGHT

by John Nairne Michaelson ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 3, 1952

A playback, in time, to a year in a boy's childhood which held- if but briefly- the innocence and illusion of a first love, to be sullied and severed by an experience of physical passion. This all happens in a small farming village in Ohio, and it is possible that the life here- and the rounds of bulling and calving- provides an incentive for limitative experimentation which might be lacking elsewhere. It is less possible that you will accept the ""theme almost never discussed by adults"" (say the publishers) if only in that most adults do not think of the pre-adolescent in terms of mature sexuality as it is engaged in here, and discussed in explicit, descriptive passages which in their realistic candor and lyricism are faintly reminiscent of Lawrence. Briefly, the story revolves around a boy of twelve's first cognition of original sin; the reverence and purity Jamie feels for Hallie is never recaptured again for when Jamie, after the week of afternoons spent in the woods with Madie, goes back to Hallie, it is with a sense of shame that estranges them, even though Hallie offers herself to Jamie in an attempt to reconcile both love and desire.... Puberty, at its most precocious, for adults at their least censorious.

Pub Date: April 3, 1952

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: William Sloane

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1952

Categories: FICTION