Présentation de l'éditeur :
Chicago, 1978. Hank Boyd, a solid B+ student, a good kid, wants eighth grade to be his special year. But when Ralph, a troublemaker who's failed both the third and fifth grades, starts thinking that he and Hank are best friends, Hank's year becomes an odyssey that is as frightening as it is hilarious.
Hank and Ralph join forces with Ralph's older cousins, Norm and Kenny, employees of the Tootsie Roll factory, and together they wreak havoc over Chicago's southwest side. It's a year of Styx, Cheap Trick, and Kiss, of Star Wars and CB radios, and of two very different boys attempting to make sense of the world, and of each other. When Hank, in a chance encounter, bumps into Ralph twenty-two years later, he quickly learns how much the past has a stranglehold on the present, and he can't help slipping back into the same role he played as a kid - a role that, as an adult, is fraught with far more serious consequences. THE BOOK OF RALPH is exquisitely rendered and defiantly unsentimental - a smart, assured novel from a wickedly astute young writer.
Biographie de l'auteur :
John McNally is the author of two novels, The Book of Ralph and America's Report Card, and a short story collection, Troublemakers . His next book, Ghosts of Chicago, a collection of short stories, will be published this fall. A native of Chicago, he lives with his wife, Amy, in North Carolina, where he is associate professor of English at Wake Forest University. The first word he ever spoke was "Batman" who has remained, in his darker incarnations, his favorite superhero. John's first creative work, a play written in the fourth grade, featured an overweight superhero who gets stuck inside a phone booth while changing into his costume. He is happy to return to the genre, albeit thirty-four years later.
Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.