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Product Details:
Author:
Denton Welch
Paperback:
288 pages
Publisher:
Exact Change
Publication Date:
February 02, 2004
Language:
English
ISBN:
1878972286
Package Length:
7.9 inches
Package Width:
5.96 inches
Package Height:
0.7 inches
Package Weight:
0.99 pounds
Average Customer Rating:
based on 1 reviews
Description:
Maiden Voyage is an account of author Denton Welch's sixteenth year, when he ran away from his English public school and was then sent to Shanghai to live with his father. The book was Welch's first and created a sensation on publication in 1943; its frank description of public schoolboy life forced publisher Herbert Read to initially seek advice from libel lawyers. Even Winston Churchill's private secretary gossiped in a letter that, "the book was reeking with homosexuality? I think I must get it." Today, Welch's expressions of sexuality may seem more demure than outrageous, but his portrayal of the passions and humiliations of adolescence is graphic. As in all of Welch's novels, it is the precisely realized details of the author's physical and social surroundings that make the book such a remarkable journey.
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Review:
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23 of 26 found the following review helpful:
There Should Be a 6 Star Rating For ThisDec 14, 2000 This is the book I want them to toss in my coffin before they nail the lid down. I chanced upon Maiden Voyage many years ago and as soon as I finished it, I wanted to read it all over again. The friend, who realized I had borrowed it, rather unpleasantly made me return it. Written autobiographically by a young English boy, it is an astonishing, often scandalous, and occasionally deviant account of a coming of age. Denton's brilliant style, deceptively simple but frank and intimate is timeless. Aspects of British upper class life have altered only a little since this book was written, which was pre WW2. There are still tormented boys on trains heading back to school and contemplating escape. The glimpses of Shanghai still haunt me.
I am rarely as moved by the written word. Denton Welch was a genius, a truly great writer. Maiden Voyage is his most revealing work. Order it immediately! I'm never going to lend my copy to anyone.....
based on 1 reviews
