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Denton Welch

In Youth Is Pleasure

First published in 1945, In Youth Is Pleasure recounts a summer in the life of 15-year-old Orvil Pym, who is holidaying with his father and brothers in a Kentish hotel, with little to do but explore the countryside and surrounding area. 'I don't understand what to do, how to live': so says the 15-year-old Orvil — who, as a boy who glories and suffers in the agonies of adolescence, dissecting the teenage years with an acuity, stands as a clear (marvelously British) ancestor of The Catcher In The Rye's Holden Caulfield. A delicate coming-of-age novel, shot through with humour, In Youth Is Pleasure, has long achieved cult status, and earned admirers ranging from Alan Bennett to William Burroughs, Edith Sitwell to John Waters. 'Maybe there is no better novel in the world that is Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure,' wrote Waters. 'Just holding it my hands… is enough to make illiteracy a worse crime than hunger.'
182 printed pages
Copyright owner
Bookwire
Original publication
2014
Publication year
2014
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Quotes

  • Gabriela Leonhas quoted5 years ago
    ‘Maybe there is no better novel in the world that Denton Welch’s In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse crime than hunger’
  • Diego Ivánhas quoted5 years ago
    It’s like a terrier dog’s coat, or the best thatch, guaranteed to keep the rain out for a hundred years
  • Diego Ivánhas quoted5 years ago
    Orvil was delighted and relieved when he knew that he was physically ill at last.

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