Josh by Ivan Southall, 1971

Into the churning mind of angst-ridden adolescence

Josh Plowman is fourteen years old and visiting Ryan Creek, the town founded by his great grandfather for the first time. He stays with his Aunt Clara, considered to be the Plowman family matriarch. While meeting an exacting relative is formidable enough, he also has to contend with the youth of Ryan Creek, who seem to be bent on condemning and shaming him for whatever he may do or not do. The book description says that "mutual bewilderment" arose from the encounter between Josh and the people of Ryan Creek. But for this reader, it was a three-way confusion. Was the book trying to say that small town hicks could not tolerate people who were different, like poets and dreamers? Or was it that big city snobbish sissy boys took the world too seriously and could never understand the simple, hardworking folk, the salt of the earth? At the very least, the book conveyed to me very clearly why I never want go back to teenagerhood. The story is written from a very closed Josh-point-of-view that even the sentence patterns seem to careen across the page with only verbs and no nouns nor pronouns to drive them. The effect, while exciting and dynamic, conveying the churning mind of angst-ridden adolescence , gave me a headache and made me want to shout, "WHOA! You need some tranquilizers, boy!" Though I won't read it again, I would say this book deserved its award. Any teenager who feels maltreated and misunderstood by the world and wondering why people can compromise their principles just as easily as changing underwear, will see themselves in Josh. This is for you, young dreamers, book-readers, poets - all you social outcasts!