From Boyhood: "Kerr has said that every attachment has two sides: one loves, and the other allows himself to be loved; one kisses, and the other surrenders his cheek. That is perfectly true. In the case of our own attachment it was I who kissed, and Dimitri who surrendered his cheek—though he, in his turn, was ready to pay me a similar salute. We loved equally because we knew and appreciated each other thoroughly, but this did not prevent him from exercising an influence over me, nor myself from rendering him adoration."
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Leo Tolstoy, the celebrated author of the 1300-page War and Peace and 800-page Anna Karenina, wasn't always so lengthy in his prose. He published Boyhood, which is fewer than one-hundred pages, in 1854 at the age of twenty-six. Boyhood is the middle part of a semi-autobiographical trilogy that began with the publication of Childhood in 1852 and concluded with Youth in 1856. Readers, critics, and psychologists alike generally consider the middle book the most intriguing of the three, for Childhood lacks a compelling storyline and Youth embraces a sentimentalism that led Tolstoy to later reject it and cancel his plans to pen a fourth installment. Although the three books were published separately and meant to be stand-alone volumes, today they are often combined into a single edition. This is somewhat unfortunate, for readers must plod through the first book to get to the riches of the second, only to be let down by the third. Read in its own right, Boyhood stands as the best example of the richness of Tolstoy's early writing. It is a fitting introduction to Tolstoy for readers who are put off by the challenge of tackling his longer works, but it is also a must-read for fans of Tolstoy who have conquered the paperweights and door stops. Boyhood is a charming, insightful narrative that perfectly captures the jumbled emotions of those middle years of growing up.
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Watersgreen House is an independent international book publisher with editorial staff in the UK and USA. One of our aims at Watersgreen House is to showcase same-sex affection in works by important gay and bisexual authors in ways which were not possible at the time the books were originally published. We also publish nonfiction, including textbooks, as well as contemporary fiction that is literary, unusual, and provocative. watersgreen.wixsite.com/watersgreenhouse
