NYRB Classics: Eustace and Hilda
by Ron Hogan
Don't forget that tonight is the first of two consecutive evenings in which John Banville comes to Manhattan to celebrate NYRB Classics reaching its 150th title. He'll be at the Union Square Barnes & Noble tonight with Jonathan Lethem and Deborah Eisenberg. And if, like me, you can't see him tonight, you can still catch him Friday at Three Lives. Meanwhile, NYRB Classics editor Edwin Frank continues to share some of his favorites in the line:
"Growing up is a more or less inescapable fact of life and unsurprisingly the subject of countless books. The NYRB Classics series includes a number that look at this experience from particularly surprising angles. Richard Hughes's A High Wind in Jamaica, which tells of troupe of not-so-innocent children who find themselves at the mercy of not-so-guilty pirates, is a great book, as is L.P. Hartley's tale of infatuation and exploitation, The Go-Between. Here though I’d especially like to single out Hartley's wonderful earlier book, Eustace and Hilda, the first section of which is a quite miraculous evocation not just of childhood but of how a child thinks and feels, of the whole texture of childhood experience. Thanks in part to this preternaturally vivid beginning the book as a whole--about a brother and sister who are both inseparable and incompatible, and for whom first impressions and final moments tragically converge--is unusually poignant and powerful."
And I'll spotlight another gem NYRB Classics has in this category: A Way of Life, Like Any Other, by Darcy O'Brien. One of the best child's-eye views of Hollywood I can recall reading.
