Her entry begins:I just finished reading Everything Happens Today by Jesse Browner, and I must accompany this with a confession: I picked it up because it got a starred review in the issue of Shelf Awareness where my book received high praise but no star. I mused, "hmm, what's he got that I don't?" so I read the book and thought, "oh, this." It's kind of an updated variation on The Catcher in the Rye, with a protagonist, Wes, who is so well-meaning and snarky and heartfelt and conflicted, all at once. Each of the characters is wonderfully evoked, flawed and lovable and three-dimensional. By the end I was...[read on]About The Kingdom of Childhood, from the publisher:
The Kingdom of Childhood is the story of a boy and a woman: sixteen-year-old Zach Patterson, uprooted and struggling to reconcile his knowledge of his mother's extramarital affair, and Judy McFarland, a kindergarten teacher watching her family unravel before her eyes. Thrown together toLearn more about the book and author at Rebecca Coleman's website and blog.organize a fundraiser for their failing private school and bonded by loneliness, they begin an affair that at first thrills, then corrupts each of them. Judy sees in Zach the elements of a young man she loved as a child, but what Zach does not realize is that their relationship is—for Judy—only the latest in a lifetime of disturbing secrets.
Rebecca Coleman's manuscript for The Kingdom of Childhood was a semifinalist in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition. An emotionally tense, chilling work of fiction set in the controversial Waldorf school community, it is equal parts enchanting and unsettling and is sure to be a much-discussed and much-debated novel.
The Page 69 Test: The Kingdom of Childhood.
Writers Read: Rebecca Coleman.
--Marshal Zeringue
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