Description: Padgett Powell's first novel (1984) is about coming of age on Edisto, an undeveloped strip of coast between Savannah and Charleston, a "named but never discovered place in the South."
Review Quotes: Praise for EDISTO by Padgett Powell
"Edisto is a startling book, full of new sights, sounds, and ways of feeling. Mr. Powell weaves wonderful tapestries from ordinary speech; his people, black and white, whether speaking to each other or past each other, tell us things that we never heard before. The book is subtle, daring, and brilliant." --Donald Barthelme "Sly, pungent, lyric, funny, and unlikely to be forgotten." --R. Z. Sheppard, Time "Edisto is a truly remarkable first novel, both as a narrative and in its extraordinary use of language. It reminds one of The Catcher in the Rye, but it's better--sharper, funnier, more poignant." --Walker Percy "Walker Percy is quoted on the novel's dust jacket as saying that it 'reminds one of The Catcher in the Rye, but it's better--sharper, funnier, more poignant.' For once, a dust jacket is right." --Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post Book World "Edisto is distinctly a tour de force. . . . Some turn of phrase, some flash of humor, some freshly observed detail, some accurately rendered perception of a child's pain or a child's amazement transfigures nearly every page." --Robert Towers, The New York Review of Books "Simons Manigault is brother to all literary adolescents--Mailer's D.J., Salinger's Holden Caulfield, Joyce's Stephen Dedalus. . . . [Edisto] is a sparkling read, so full of an energetic intelligence, inventiveness, love of language and love of people. . . . Padgett Powell is an extravagantly talented writer." --Ron Loewinsohn, The New York Times Book Review "A remarkable book . . . There is not a line that simply slides by; each, in one way or another, turns things to a fresh and unexpected angle. There are splendid things said." --Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review "Powell creates a language that captures rhythms and reflections that are at once original and true." --Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek "When asked for a list of the best American writers of the younger generation, I invariably put the name of Padgett Powell at the top." --Saul Bellow "Rereading Edisto fifteen to twenty years later, I reacted exactly the same way: caught in the headlights and grateful for not being run over. Line for line, the best first novel I've ever read." --Pete Dexter "A modern master of first-person narrative."" --Tampa Bay Times