Boy (ePub)

James Hanley (1897-1985) was born in Liverpool, England, to an Irish Catholic family. He spent time in the merchant navy and served with the Canadian Infantry during World War I. From 1930 to 1981 Hanley published forty-eight books, including the novels Boy, The Furys, The Ocean, Another World, and Hollow Sea. He penned plays for radio, television, and theater and published a work of nonfiction, Grey Children, on the plight of coal miners. Hanley died in London but was buried in Wales, the setting for many of his works.

“James Hanley’s writing is as succinct as a telegram, nude, yet terrific.” —The New York Times
 
“[Hanley’s writing is] uncompromising, stark, too truthful to be comfortable.” —Anthony Burgess
 
“[Hanley was] not British, not American, not South African, not Ebury Street, not Chicago. Just language like a good clean cyclone.” —William Faulkner
 
“A modernist master.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
“Powerful and moving . . . Hanley’s brilliance is to shock us whatever our level of sophistication. . . . The reader’s consciousness is seared by the experience.” —London Evening Standard
 
“Painfully honest and direct . . . The horror of the situation grips from cover to cover.” — Financial Times
 
“This novel has retained its power to shock. . . . It is, quite simply, one of the bleakest books ever written.” —Nick Hornby
 
“The story is quite shattering in its impact.” —The Independent
 
“A message in a dirty bottle from the days when it was brave to be dirty.” —The Literary Review
 
“A cry of protest against the degradation of the human spirit.” —The Scotsman
 
“A work of remarkable power.” —The Spectator
 
“There could be few more shocking accounts of the brutality of life.” —The Daily Telegraph
 
“A novel of great power.” —The Sunday Telegraph
 
“A fiercely accusing report on juvenile maltreatment . . . which has a blistering directness that shrivels decorous veilings of ugly facts.” —The Sunday Times
 
“Boy is an excellent, more, a necessary introduction to the chaotic, frightening world of