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 dont 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 Ryes 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 Welchs In Youth Is Pleasure, wrote Waters.

Just holding it my hands is enough to make illiteracy a worse crime than hunger.