Product Details
Free Press, February 2004
Hardcover, 304 pages
ISBN-10: 0743255550
ISBN-13: 9780743255554
Description
All of us need a Ralph in our lives.
Chicago, 1978. Hank Boyd, a solid B+ student, a good kid, wants eighth grade to be his special year. But when Ralph, an oddball troublemaker who ' s been held back twice, gets the idea that he and Hank are pals, Hank's year devolves into an odyssey as frightening as it is hilarious.
John McNally, acclaimed author of Troublemakers, deftly portrays the astonishing, sometimes terrifying world of adolescence in 1970s America: The adult world becomes increasingly untrustworthy, the economy plummets, and families seem to be falling apart, yet the two boys manage to create their own small moments of transcendence.
At once wary and full of wonder, Hank and Ralph will win your heart with their outrageous, poignant, and occasionally scary antics -- and they will teach you something about the ties that bind us together, hold us back, and redeem us.
"The Book of Ralph is like a collection of strange and wonderful objects set out on the lawn, a carnival of vivid memories. It should earn John McNally the audience that his talent and wit deserve."
-- Chicago Tribune
"Sometimes hazy, occasionally wistful, often picaresque chapters are delivered with a satirist's perfect understated pitch and announce John McNally -- also the author of Trouble-makers, a collection of stories -- as a gifted meta-memoirist."
-- The Washington Post
Haven KimmelAuthor of A Girl Named Zippy and Something Rising (Light and Swift)Populated with unlikely heroes, cast in the gray light of Chicago's South Side, McNally's book is wonderful, hilarious, and perfectly specific. By the end, I felt like I'd known Hank and Ralph my whole life.
Chris OffuttAuthor of No HeroesJohn McNally brilliantly evokes childhood with all its love and loneliness, fear and sorrows, laughter and joy. His bold leaps through narrative time reveal our inability to fully escape the pressures of our past.
Julianna Baggottauthor of Girl Talk, The Miss America Family, and The MadamHilarious, perverted, cartoonish, violent, absurd, disturbed, and, in the end, dead-on realistic. How can we withhold our love from someone so haunted by Chicago's most notorious serial killer, so lustily inspired by Cheap Trick (I Want You to Want Me...)? In The Book of Ralph, McNally more than cops a feel of his generation's psyche, he nails it.
John McNally's Books
-
Who Can Save Us Now?Twenty-two of today's most talented writers (and comics fans) unite in Who Can Save Us Now?, an anthology featuring brand-new superheroes equipped for...Read More
-
America's Report CardAmerica's Report Card offers a brilliant vision of contemporary American life that is frightening, darkly hilarious, and tinged with satire. John...Read More
-
When I Was a LoserFor Anyone Who's Ever Been a Teenager Who's teenage years weren't terrible? Remember the scary older kids? The sadistic gym teacher? The smelly kid who...Read More
Displaying 1 of
