Neon Bible

"e;A moving evocation of the small-town South in the mid-twentieth century"e; that "e;belongs on the shelf with the works of Flannery O'Connor, Carson McCullers, and Eudora Welty"e; (Orlando Sentinel). John Kennedy Toole who won a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for his best-selling comic masterpiece A Confederacy of Dunces wrote The Neon Bible for a literary contest at the age of sixteen. The manuscript languished in a drawer and became the subject of a legal battle among Toole's heirs. It was only in 1989, thirty-five years after it was written and twenty years after Toole's suicide at thirty-one, that this amazingly accomplished and evocative novel was freed for publication. "e;Heartfelt emotion, communicated in clean direct prose . . . a remarkable achievement."e; Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "e;John Kennedy Toole's tender, nostalgic side is as brilliantly effective as his corrosive satire. If you liked To Kill A Mockingbird you will love The Neon Bible."e; Florence King "e;Shockingly mature. . . . Even at sixteen, Toole knew that the way to write about complex emotions is to express them simply."e; Kerry Luft, Chicago Tribune