Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 432 pages
- Published by: Vintage May 21, 2002
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0375719180
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0375719189
-
Book Dimensions:
8 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
- Weighs: 11.4 ounces
From Publishers Weekly
Reminiscent of another debut Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest this powerful first novel by short story writer Udall (Letting Loose the Hounds) is constructed around grotesque set pieces; black humor drives the plot. Set in the late '60s, Udall's story begins when seven-year-old Edgar Mint, the half-Apache, half-white narrator, is run over by the mailman's car, his head crushed. Abandoned by his grandmother and alcoholic mother after his remarkable recovery, the boy begins an odyssey through various institutions and homes, starting with St. Divine's hospital in Globe, Ariz., where he recuperates, through Willie Sherman's, a horrific school for Indian children, ending up placed with a dysfunctional Mormon family in Richland, Utah. The novel's long middle section, describing Edgar's brutalization at the Indian school by the other kids, captures the effect of what seems like endless bullying on a child's consciousness. Against this hostility, Edgar concocts a homemade magic, which consists mainly of typing on a clunky Hermes typewriter given to him by a fellow St. Divine's patient, Art Crozier, a middle-aged man who has lost his family in a car wreck. One of Udall's best touches is to make the doctor who saved Edgar, Barry Pinkley, into a mysterious and menacing figure, perpetually lurking on the sidelines, rather like Clare Quilty in Lolita. While Pinkley strives maniacally to be Edgar's guardian angel, the boy views him with ambivalent loathing. When Pinkley, disguised as a Mormon missionary, seduces Lana Madsen, the wife in the Mormon family that takes Edgar in, he sets off the final catastrophe in the boy's life. Udall's style is reminiscent of the '60s black humorists, but he doesn't share their easy cruelty or inveterate superciliousness, making this not only an accomplished novel, but a wise one.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-With Dickensian flair and extreme proficiency, Udall gives readers an underdog child protagonist, surrounds him with a cast of half-funny and half-tragic characters, and immerses them all in a plot full of staggering setbacks and occasional, hard-won moments of peace. When his head is crushed by a mail truck at age seven, Edgar is left for dead by his alcoholic, disinterested mother, who doesn't stick around to learn that he is later "brought back" by a shady doctor and whisked away to a hospital to recuperate. Some months and several delightfully cantankerous roommates later, Edgar regains all functions but the ability to write, which is more than solved when a fellow patient gets him a typewriter. Typing soothes the boy and becomes necessary therapy when he is released to an Indian school where other students punish him horrifically for being a "half-breed" (Apache and white). He is saved, literally and figuratively, by a pair of missionaries who recruit and place him with a Mormon family in a Utah suburb. Now that he feels relatively safe, the protagonist finds himself with a new purpose: to track down the devastated mailman who feels responsible for his death and let him know that he's alive and fine. Yet his sense of safety remains merely relative, as the disbarred doctor surfaces repeatedly in his life, full of menacing, disturbing love and determined to raise Edgar as his own son. This novel is a wonderful, wise debut, with a strong story told in language that teens will find easy to embrace.
Emily Lloyd, Fairfax County Public Library, VACopyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Reader Reviews
This review is from: The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint: A Novel (Hardcover)
A heartbreaking but ultimately triumphant work of incredible genius. There were times, while reading this book that I could simply not bear to go any further. I was filled with rage at the writer who could allow his own 'son', so to speak, be made to endure such incredible cruelty and violence. I guess I just went on because it would have felt like not completing the book would have been almost like abandoning this child. Edgar is brave, lovable, loyal and heroic without having the slightest clue that he is anything of the sort. Read this book. It's one of those where you can't wait to find out what happens at the end, while simultaneously rationing your reading so the book doesn't end too soon. This is definitely a book you will find yourself recommending to everyone you know who reads at all - a book that has the ability to make you cry and laugh out loud often on the same page.
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