The Boy with the Thorn in His Side: A Memoir

by Keith Fleming

Book Overview

This very moving memoir tells the story of a dramatic adolescence: Sixteen-year-old Keith Flemings life is literally saved when his young uncle Ed, the writer Edmund White, impulsively agrees to... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B000IOEMWK
• ISBN13: 9780060959302
• Release Date: April 2001
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 220 Pages
• Weight: 1.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellent: equal parts passion and discipline

I found myself admiring the narrative structures Mr Fleming has designed for his memoir, which reads more like a good novel. He never tells us more than we want to know, yet what he does tell us always sheds light on a most unusual adolescence and family. There's a wonderful grasp of character here, including the author's own younger self. His uncle Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story has long been one of the novels I most admire, and I think what his nephew Keith Fleming has accomplished here is a new Boy's Own Story, the next generation of it. The depiction of the young Edmund White, not yet famous, is priceless, yet I think the book would stand up just as well were the Uncle Ed of the book not a famous name. The relationship between uncle and nephew is one of the most complex and fascinating connections I can remember reading. The book leaves you wanting to know what transpired next between these two.

REMARKABLE!

Within the first five pages of this book, I forgot my surroundings and became totally immersed in Keith Fleming's story. I read the book in a day and a half, and will re-read it again and again. Gripping and unpretentious, this memoir sizzles and sparks with anger and realism, as teenage angst comes alive in these pages. It is heart-breaking, but triumphant thanks to the author's timely intervention of his wise uncle, who happens to be gay, but is the only adult in the author's family who comes to his rescue at a critical time in his life. Fleming's dysfunctional family is 'a bit like you and me.' All American families can all relate to his tale, in varying degrees. A courageous, honest effort here. Bravo, Mr. Fleming!READ THIS BOOK!

A Wonderful Ride

I still feel under the spell of Keith Fleming's wonderful memoir, The Boy with the Thorn in his Side. I read it over the weekend in 2 sittings. The opening pages grabbed me right away -- what an eccentric, fascinating family! Whether describing his first innocent sexual adventures, or his horrifying experience as the patient of a pyschiatrist/sadist, or his touching romance with an inner-city Latina, Fleming writes so well about what it feels like to be a teenager at the mercy of circumstances. And what circumstances! The book takes us through one extreme situation after another, always described with deep feeling and great sense of style. This book is so much more than a portrait of his uncle Edmund White. I recommend it to anyone interested in love, in families, in adolescence -- in life!

A real pleasure

Keith Fleming may have had a leg up on the rest of us eager to pen and share our memoirs, via his association with a famed writer. But, as they say, whatever gets you in the door. Though the initital attraction to the book was my interest in gaining a privileged view of how a writer thrives in a world where bills must be paid and real life is beyond one's creative control, I soon found myself lost in the story of Keith Fleming. His struggle to understand himself and to be understood while moving inevitably toward adulthood reminds of my own. In the end, this book became a sort of secret sharer for me, a place to reflect on my own life journey and those various figures in my life who have helped shape my sense of self. Too bad I never had anyone as cool as Uncle Eddie.