The Neon Bible Av John Kennedy Toole

<p><b>The accomplished and evocative first novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of <i>A Confederacy of Dunces</i>.</b><br><br>John Kennedy Toole wrote<i> The Neon Bible </i>for a literary contest at the age of sixteen. The manuscript was finally published twenty years after Toole's death.<br><br><i>The Neon Bible</i> opens with the narrator, a young man named David, on a train, leaving the small Southern town he's grown up in for the first time. What unspools is the tender and tragic coming-of-age story of a lonely child, a story that revolves around David's unorthodox friendship with his great-aunt Mae - a former stage performer who is fiercely at odds with the conservative townspeople - and the everyday toll of living in an environment of religious fanaticism. From the opening lines of <i>The Neon Bible</i>, David is fully alive, naive yet sharply observant, drawing us into his world through the sure artistry of John Kennedy Toole.</p>