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"We've waited a long time for a sequel to [Jim the Boy], and during those eight years, Jim the boy has grown into Jim the young man, the sort of person you'd expect from the first novel. He's decent and contemplative, concerned about others' feelings and his own shortcomings, suspended awkwardly between adolescence and adulthood." Ron Charles, The Washington Post Book World (read the entire Washington Post Book World review)
Synopses & Reviews
Publisher Comments:
Seven years ago, readers everywhere fell in love with Jim Glass, the precocious ten-year-old at the heart of Tony Earley's bestseller Jim the Boy. Now a teenager, Jim returns in another tender and wise story of young love on the eve of World War Two.
Jim Glass has fallen in love, as only a teenage boy can fall in love, with his classmate Chrissie Steppe. Unfortunately, Chrissie is Bucky Bucklaw's girlfriend, and Bucky has joined the Navy on the eve of war. Jim vows to win Chrissie's heart in his absence, but the war makes high school less than a safe haven, and gives a young man's emotions a grown man's gravity.
With the uncanny insight into the well-intentioned heart that made Jim the Boy a favorite novel for thousands of readers, Tony Earley has fashioned another nuanced and unforgettable portrait of America in another time — making it again even realer than our own day. This is a timeless and moving story of discovery, loss and growing up, proving why Tony Earley's writing "radiates with a largeness of heart" (Esquire).
Review:
"The small dramas of teenage love get caught in the crosswinds of a war in this sequel to the 2001 bestseller Jim the Boy. It's late summer 1941, and Jim Glass, now a high school senior, has an earnest, unshakable passion for classmate Chrissie Steppe. But as straightforward as his feelings are, the circumstances of his nascent romance are complex: Chrissie's family is indebted to their landlord, whose sailor son Bucky claimed Chrissie as his girl before shipping out to serve on the USS California at Pearl Harbor. Throughout Jim's fraught final year at school, he relies on the advice of his uncles, but after Pearl Harbor is bombed, they can't protect him from the war's toll. Questions of patriotism, sexuality and poverty weave their way into a narrative that's deceptive in its simplicity: the growing pains that Jim and his friends experience pack a startling emotional punch." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Review:
"In 2000, Tony Earley published a delicate, daringly uneventful novel called 'Jim the Boy.' His short stories in Harper's and the New Yorker had already attracted enthusiastic praise, but this first novel about a sensitive 10-year-old in a small North Carolina town inspired ferocious devotion. I thought it was one of the best books of the year; I tried to read chapters to my family but kept getting... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) too choked up. Newspapers ran adulatory author profiles of the modest Vanderbilt professor, and there was talk about the advent of a new classic. At the time, I remember consulting with several reviewers around the country about how to categorize 'Jim the Boy.' The problem concerned us because we cared so much. Was it a YA book? The juvenile jacket cover — retained, unfortunately, for this sequel — seemed aimed at middle-schoolers, but we worried about scaring off adult readers with that label, and we suspected it was too slow for teens anyhow (no rape, school shooting or bone cancer — the unholy trinity of YA lit). We've waited a long time for a sequel to that story, and during those eight years, Jim the boy has grown into Jim the young man, the sort of person you'd expect from the first novel. He's decent and contemplative, concerned about others' feelings and his own shortcomings, suspended awkwardly between adolescence and adulthood. The key to Jim is that he's an ordinary teenager who's endowed with an extraordinary consciousness of the ineffable sadness and beauty of life. In fact, that point gets laid on a bit thick this time around. He can seem like some undiscovered, rural superhero: Sensitive Teen. Despite the strict emotional code of high school, he feels 'tempted to weep with some mysterious, nostalgic joy. The warm sunlight on his face seemed to remind him of something — but he couldn't explain what — and some vague but pleasant longing filled his chest.' As poignant as these moments are, a character who feels too many ineffable things can eventually excite our effable distrust. It's October of 1941, and though war is raging in Europe and Asia, it's still possible for Americans to pretend they might sit out the conflict. As new seniors, Jim and his buddies 'had ruled Aliceville School for less than a month,' Earley writes, 'but now held this high ground more or less comfortably. ... He and his friends were it.' Their reign, however, is pretty benign. These are the kind of guys who, when provoked, pop off with language like this: 'Leave a boy alone, for gosh sakes, why don't you?' Gearing up for a hot weekend, one of them claims, 'Nothing makes a girl go crazy like square dancing.' Opie could rumble with these ruffians. Most of the story concerns Jim's forbidden attraction to a part-Cherokee girl named Chrissie, whose father is on the lam. She lives up the mountain with her mother and grandparents in a state of degrading servitude to a wealthy apple farmer. Chrissie already has a boyfriend, but he's off in the Navy; for that reason, lusting after her — even by Jim's chaste standards — feels adulterous and vaguely unpatriotic. Nonetheless, sitting behind her in history class, Jim studies her hair 'with a scholar's single-minded intensity. ... It became a warm, rich space into which it suddenly seemed possible to fall and become lost.' Adolescent romance is a charming, if well-worn subject, and Earley handles it here in a charming, if well-worn way. Driving alone in his car, after an argument with a friend, Jim comes face to face with his new ardor: 'Something warm inflated and rose inside his chest, replacing in a single moment his ill temper with a growing elation. "I love Chrissie Steppe," he said out loud, realizing as he did so that the words were carrying him over some momentous boundary he had never known existed. Jim didn't know in what strange country this unexpected crossing landed him, or what dangers faced him, only that he found the vistas glorious to consider.' The object of his affection, though, considers him too naive, too optimistic and too privileged to take seriously. Jim and Chrissie have a few impromptu, adorable dates, but she won't accept his declarations. 'I think you're a very nice boy,' she tells him, 'but I also think you've never learned you don't get to have everything you want.' Jim lost his father a week before he was born, but he's been raised by his mother and her three brothers amid a wealth of affection and material support that has carried them through the Depression in far better condition than many of their neighbors. After visiting Chrissie's cabin in which 'the walls were sealed with newspapers and pieces of cardboard,' Jim begins to consider the pernicious effects of poverty and the severely cramped dimensions of others' lives. The novel builds slowly to these more serious themes — probably too slowly. Although 'Jim the Boy' walked the line between banality and profundity with exquisite sensitivity, here the balance is not so well executed. Many of these chapters are warm and graceful but not sufficiently essential, and the writing isn't note-perfect enough to sustain the lack of import. Ivan Doig pulled off this sort of pastoral childhood a couple of years ago in a lovely Montana novel called 'The Whistling Season,' but 'The Blue Star' too often grows slack, too enamored with Jim's precious epiphanies. Fortunately, as the novel nears its conclusion, these merely nostalgic scenes begin to acquire real emotional depth. The bubble of Jim's pleasant adolescence pops, and he must confront some life-shattering events — pain his mother and uncles have effectively shielded him from. 'The attendant beauty and sadness of the world suddenly seemed to him available for pondering in a way they never had before,' Earley writes. 'He felt as though he had spent his life until this evening poised over an exam, waiting for the teacher to say, "Begin." Now he had begun.' These late chapters are as good as anything Earley has ever written — unashamedly sweet and pure and sad — but I'm worried that only patient readers will hang on to reap these rewards. That would be too bad because by the end I was enthralled again, and the novel left me eager for the story of Jim's adventures in World War II. Ron Charles is a senior editor of The Washington Post Book World. Send e-mail to charlesr(at symbol)washpost.com." Reviewed by Ron Charles, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group) (hide most of this review)
Review:
"The deceptive simplicity of the matter-of-fact narrative inexorably draws the reader into this tender and true coming-of-age tale." Booklist
Review:
"Earley...brings to life a very appealing rural community, conjuring up a portrait of a bygone America where people conducted themselves with dignity and devoted themselves to simple virtues and values." Library Journal
Review:
"A sweet-tempered, mostly successful sequel for those who like their fiction sepia-toned." Kirkus Reviews
Review:
"[A] wonderful reminder of how we used to live." Kansas City Star
Synopsis:
Seven years ago, readers were introduced to the precocious ten-year-old at the heart of Earley's bestseller Jim the Boy. Now a teenager, Jim returns in another tender and wise story of young love on the eve of World War II.
Tony Earley is the author of Jim the Boy, Here We Are in Paradise and Somehow Form a Family. He lives with his family in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is the Samuel Milton Fleming Associate Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.
gaby317, September 18, 2009 (view all comments by gaby317)
A portrait of life in America on the eve of World War II, The Blue Star tells the story of Jim Glass Jr during his last year of high school. From among the well-to-do families in his small town, Jim has recently broken up with Norma Harris. Jim finds himself in the awkward position of being fascinated by his friend Bucky's girl friend Chrissie Steppe. But his friend, Bucky Bucklaw Jr. is in the Navy, surely courting Chrissie Steppe would be out of bounds.
When Jim digs deeper into the relationship between Chrissie Steppe and Bucky Bucklaw, he learns more than he'd bargained for about the Steppes and even his own family.
Review:
There is so much more to The Blue Star than Jim's attraction to Chrissie Steppe, which is what makes The Blue Star such an interesting and satisfying read. You don't have to have read the earlier book Jim The Boy to appreciate The Blue Star. The characters are fully fleshed out. Each individual struggle adds to the tension and coherence of the novel. There is enough romance, tragedy and action to make The Blue Star hard to categorize and easy to enjoy.
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (1 of 1 readers found this comment helpful)
Margaret Upshaw, April 8, 2008 (view all comments by Margaret Upshaw)
Not only did I return to the beauty of the North
Carolina mountains, but I learned that Jim the Boy
has become just the kind of decent, contemplative
young man the first novel suggested. Thanks, Tony
Earley. The Blue Star was even better than a reunion
with an old friend who remains every bit as enjoyable
as you remember. May the sequel come soon.
b
Was this comment helpful? | Yes | No (7 of 10 readers found this comment helpful)
Product details
304 pages
Little Brown and Company -
English9780316199070
Reviews:
"Publishers Weekly Review"
by Publishers Weekly,
"The small dramas of teenage love get caught in the crosswinds of a war in this sequel to the 2001 bestseller Jim the Boy. It's late summer 1941, and Jim Glass, now a high school senior, has an earnest, unshakable passion for classmate Chrissie Steppe. But as straightforward as his feelings are, the circumstances of his nascent romance are complex: Chrissie's family is indebted to their landlord, whose sailor son Bucky claimed Chrissie as his girl before shipping out to serve on the USS California at Pearl Harbor. Throughout Jim's fraught final year at school, he relies on the advice of his uncles, but after Pearl Harbor is bombed, they can't protect him from the war's toll. Questions of patriotism, sexuality and poverty weave their way into a narrative that's deceptive in its simplicity: the growing pains that Jim and his friends experience pack a startling emotional punch." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)
"Review A Day"
by Ron Charles, The Washington Post Book World,
"We've waited a long time for a sequel to [Jim the Boy], and during those eight years, Jim the boy has grown into Jim the young man, the sort of person you'd expect from the first novel. He's decent and contemplative, concerned about others' feelings and his own shortcomings, suspended awkwardly between adolescence and adulthood." (read the entire Washington Post Book World review)
"Review"
by Booklist,
"The deceptive simplicity of the matter-of-fact narrative inexorably draws the reader into this tender and true coming-of-age tale."
"Review"
by Library Journal,
"Earley...brings to life a very appealing rural community, conjuring up a portrait of a bygone America where people conducted themselves with dignity and devoted themselves to simple virtues and values."
"Review"
by Kirkus Reviews,
"A sweet-tempered, mostly successful sequel for those who like their fiction sepia-toned."
"Review"
by Kansas City Star,
"[A] wonderful reminder of how we used to live."
"Synopsis"
by Ingram,
Seven years ago, readers were introduced to the precocious ten-year-old at the heart of Earley's bestseller Jim the Boy. Now a teenager, Jim returns in another tender and wise story of young love on the eve of World War II.
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