I enjoyed this story and recommend it. The voice and setting are appealing and it's a good, quick read.

This is a funny and sophisticated coming-of-age story. The author has an impressive command of both dialogue and unusual and telling descriptions. Simons is a remarkable, unusual, and alive boy-man. The story sparkles with youthful enthusiasm in spite of its sophistication, and despite its irony never lapses into easy cynicism. Highly recommended.

This has been a wildy overrated novel since the day it was published some fifteen or so years ago. Powell was praised for his verbal inventiveness, but what he has here is verbal obfuscation. Exactly what is he trying to say? It is hard to tell once the reader's entangled in his verbal trap of dialect, half-baked description, and misguided rhetoric. And none of the characters, with the exception of the black cook, is memorably drawn. We really don't care what happens to any of them. Only one scene, the depiction of the boy's attending the Ali-Frazier fight, with the locals rooting on native son Joe Frazier, shows any genuine comic invention.