Boy’s Life

Boy’s Life

by Robert McCammon

Boy’s Life Robert R. McCammon Pocket Books 1992 (but in print in new editions) 608 pages ISN 978-0671743055 An absolute masterpiece, Boy’s Life may well get my vote as the best novel I’ve ever read. An episodic novel with individual chapters that together tell a murder mystery that challenged the life of Corey Mackerson, an adolescent growing up in 1960’s Alabama. McCammon writes about the magic of childhood, imagination and how we often lose that as we ‘grow up,’ family and what it means, the loss of innocence, and the Civil Rights movement. Stunning, ambitious stuff and McCammon is fully up to the audacious task. While it is not a ‘horror story’ in any narrow sense of the word, it contains passages that will endure. There is a reason why it was a staple of public education reading lists for years. If you haven’t read it, put aside every single title on your TBR list and pick this one up. It really is that good.