Edisto

Some writers have such fun with our shared language—stretching it, wandering down its more neglected byways, reveling in its regionalisms—that it makes you wonder why so many of their peers are content to stay buttoned up. When Padgett Powell lets loose, his style is always grounded in the spoken word, in particular in the way people talk in the coastal lowcountry of South Carolina, the setting for this debut novel of a teenage white boy and the various authorities he tries to learn from and/or avoid. Does he learn? Does he come-of-age, as the name of this genre implies is almost inevitable? Well, sure, but not in the ways he expects, and not in ways that eclipse our sheer pleasure in hanging out during his unsettled, in-between years.