28 Books -- Day 13

[bluecastle]

Slake's Limbo by Felice Holman (1974)

 

"The thing that happened, when finally it happened, was so perfectly logical that it should not really be considered surprising. Because the fact is that even earlier in life Aremis Slake had often escaped into the subway when things got rough above ground. He kept a subway token in his pocket for just that emergency, and the emergencies kept occurring due to a joining of hostile circumstances." (page 9)

 

 

Just typing that paragraph makes me really, really, really want to re-read this book. Somehow it feels like the kind of sentence that might have come out of some free writing exercise, and sparked a novel.

 

In real world land today, while in a meeting in at my POW (a library) the idea of putting books in limbo came up, mostly as a joke solution to a processing issue... but the word LIMBO, in conjuction with today being Friday the 13th made me think of this book.

 

It was one of the first books I read that introduced me to "modern" YA literature. I'm sure that back in 1992 when I picked this up at the book sale (when and why did I stop signing and dating the cover pages of my books? I need to get back to that...) that I was drawn by the words "subway" and "New York."

 

1992 would have been after my 2 1/2 year love affair with the TV show "Beauty and the Beast." So any mention of living in the tunnels of NYC would have peaked my interest. The idea that there is a whole society down there...

 

And this is so lyrically, and so beautifully written... you just ache for this kid who is so beaten-down by life that he literally goes to ground... and comes out of his experiences richer for it.

 

It's hard to classify something so bleak as wonderful, but it really really is.