Description

‘Unlike any other person I had come across, Welch seemed to be speaking particularly to me’ Alan Bennett

‘Vivid … surprising … an exquisite balance of pain and beauty’ Guardian

Orvil Pym does not fit in. A waifish, eccentric, sensitive fifteen-year-old, he hates school and longs to be alone. Spending his Summer holidays in a genteel Surrey hotel with his mysterious father and two brothers who don’t understand him, he explores ancient churches, spies on a man rowing in the river and collects antiques, escaping into his own singular aesthetic world. First published in 1945, this is an unforgettable portrayal of a young man’s sensuous coming-of-age.

‘A heightened, sensual journey … it is Orvil’s vibrant energy that allows this book to bubble … beautifully odd … spectacular’ Independent

Publisher Review

Britain's Marcel Proust * The Times * Underpinning it is an exquisite balance of pain and beauty - an aspect of the sublime - as Welch brings to vivid life the existence lost to him for ever ... he is surprising us still -- John Self * Guardian * The writer who most directly influenced my work ... he makes the reader aware of the magic that is right under his eyes -- William Burroughs A heightened, sensual journey ... it is Orvil's vibrant energy that allows this book to bubble ... beautifully odd ... spectacular -- The Independent Unlike any other person I had come across, Welch seemed to be speaking particularly to me -- Alan Bennett Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger -- John Waters