The Boy

A debut novel features a charismatic chameleon of a boy who draws his foster family into a web of mysterious, unwholesome intentions

Literature & Fiction

Murr, Naeem

United States

Houghton/Mifflin

Who is the boy? And whose body lies beneath a sheet of blue tarpaulin in the basement of a derelict brewery? The discovery of a chilling diary sends Sean Kennedy, once a foster father to the boy, on a desperate search to unlock the secrets of his tragic past and to learn the truth about the boy's part in the disintegration of Sean's family. The boy's compelling and protean personality (he is Devon to the keepers of the Boys' Home, Alex to the Fatman with whom he lives, Priestly to the young rent-boy who reveres him, and Durwood to Sean's daughter) arches over this disturbing novel and is mirrored in the lives of all the people Sean encounters. From these different perspectives we witness the boy's many incarnations, which reflect, aggravate, and distort the desires of those around him, involving these characters irrevocably in his own mysterious intentions. The boy keeps just beyond Sean's reach, then draws him into a final encounter that is both poignant and brutal. This first novel is a penetrating study of innocence and malice ineluctably bound. With his protean sexuality and personality, the boy insinuates himself into the lives of those he encounters. We witness how he feeds their deepest desires, nourishes their greatest needs, and involves them irrevocably in his own intentions. Winner of the Lambda Literary Foundation's Editors' Choice Award for 1998!

Mariner Books

Perfect Man

Literary

Heinemann Group Ltd.

According to Amos Radcliff's disability claim, he lost a leg in an accident with a beer barrel, but when social worker Daniel arrives to investigate he meets with a shock. To begin with Amos is living in Daniel's childhood home, a council flat still full of his dead mother's possessions, and Amos's leg is still very much attached. From this introduction a strange relationship develops between the two men. Daniel finds himself drawn back to the flat again and again to hear Amos's hypnotic seafaring stories and to relive his own memories of his troubled relationships with his mother, his best friend and his beloved wife Sally. Then comes Amos's final, shattering story...

Genius of the Sea, The

Contemporary

William Heinemann, Ltd.

Daniel Mulvaugh is drawn to Amos Radcliff, an ex-merchant marine whose tales of life on the high seas provides comfort for all Daniel regrets in life.

The Genius of the Sea: A Novel

Free Press

Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Europe and South Asia. Winner of the 2008 PEN Beyond Margins Award. Identity, friendship, and a long-hidden crime lie at the heart of Naeem Murr’s captivating novel about five friends growing up in a small 1950s Missouri river town. A contender for the Man Booker Prize, this exhilarating story beautifully evokes the extreme joys, as well as the dark and shameful desires, of childhood. Young Rajiv Travers hasn’t had much luck fitting in anywhere. Born to an Indian mother who was sold to his English father for £20, Raj is abandoned by his relatives into the reluctant care of Ruth, an American romance writer living in Pisgah, Missouri. While his skin color unsettles most of the townsfolk, who are used to seeing things in black and white, the quick-witted Raj soon finds his place among a group of children his own age. While the friends remain loyal to one another through the years, it becomes clear that their paths will veer in markedly different directions. But breaking free of the demands of their families and their community, as well as one another, comes at a devastating price: As the chilling secrets of Pisgah’s residents surface, the madness that erupts will cost Raj his closest friend even as it offers him the life he always dreamed of. Taking us into the intimate life of small-town America, The Perfect Man explores both the power of the secrets that shape us and the capacity of love in all its guises to heal even the most damaged of souls.

The Perfect Man: A Novel

Random House Publishing Group

Every Exit Brings You Home: A Novel

W.W.Norton&Company

According to Amos Radcliff's disability claim, he lost a leg in an accident with a beer barrel, but when social worker Daniel arrives to investigate he meets with a shock. To begin with Amos is living in Daniel's childhood home, a council flat still full of his dead mother's possessions, and Amos's leg is still very much attached. From this introduction a strange relationship develops between the two men. Daniel finds himself drawn back to the flat again and again to hear Amos's hypnotic seafaring stories and to relive his own memories of his troubled relationships with his mother, his best friend, and his beloved wife Sally. Then comes Amos's final shattering story . . .

The Genius of the Sea

Independently published

THE BOY

Fourth Estate Ltd.

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