First published 1954
Peter Foley looks back on his college years and the friends who shaped him during what he calls "the huge season" of his youth. The story moves between past and present as Foley recalls his relationships with charismatic classmates and the events that bound them together. Morris explores how memory transforms experience and how the intensity of youth gives way to the compromises of middle age. The novel captures the weight of nostalgia and the difficulty of understanding who we were versus who we became. At its heart, this is a story about the friendships that define us and the moments that seem enormous when we live them but shrink or expand unexpectedly in memory.
Genres: fiction, american-fiction, 20th-century, coming-of-age, contemporary, academic
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: coming-of-age, found-family, unreliable-narrator
Period: College Years, Middle Age
306 pages · Hardcover · Viking