The Willow Tree
A Novel
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- ¥1,400
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- ¥1,400
発行者による作品情報
Hubert Selby Jr., acclaimed author of the classic novel Last Exit to Brooklyn, tells the powerful story of an extraordinary bond between an African-American teen seeking vengeance in the wake of tragedy and an old man who guides him toward redemption
Growing up in New York City's soul-killing South Bronx ghetto, Bobby, a young black teenager, has only known violence, poverty, and despair. But there is one true light in his life: his girlfriend, Maria. On their way to school one morning, they are set upon by a vicious street gang. Bobby, beaten bloody and senseless, survives, rescued by an old German man who is himself a survivor of the Nazi death camps. The man calls himself Moishe, though he claims not to be Jewish, and he takes the damaged boy under his wing, determined to help heal his physical and psychological wounds. An unlikely friendship is born, strengthened by a shared sense of loss and life's tragic injustices. But Moishe's message of learning to forgive the unforgivable falls on deaf ears, because there is a hole in Bobby's heart that only revenge can fill.
Hubert Selby Jr.'s extraordinary novel is a devastating work of raw power and stylistic brilliance that captures the pain and hardship of twentieth-century urban life. Unflinching and unrelenting, in the vein of his acclaimed masterwork, Last Exit to Brooklyn, Selby's The Willow Tree is a dark tale tempered by hope: a story of love, death, rage, violence, and salvation.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Hubert Selby Jr. including rare photos from the author's estate.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
More than a decade after the publication of his story collection Song of the Silent Snow, Selby (Last Exit to Brooklyn) returns with a breathless and unconvincing tale of the fall and redemption of Bobby, a black teenager in the Bronx. At the start of the novel, Bobby and his girlfriend, Maria, are attacked by a Hispanic gang in punishment for their cross-ethnic dating. Bobby is beaten with a chain; Maria has lye thrown in her face and eventually dies. Refusing to be hospitalized, Bobby falls into the care of Moishe (aka Werner Schultz), a widower who survived the concentration camps (he claims, however, that he is not a Jew) and the death of his son in Vietnam. While Bobby plots an elaborate revenge against the Hispanic gang, Moishe seeks to impress on him the dangers of hatred and the importance of forgiveness, lessons he learned in the camps. Best read as a sort of fable, Selby's novel renders few details of ghetto life: the characters' incessant slang rings false, and the story's exact moment remains fuzzy (though the fact that the street weapons of choice appear to be knives and chains rather than semi-automatics would seem to put it somewhere in the past). Selby's characteristically chaotic prose removes the story even further from reality. What the novel does have is genuine passion, and Moishe's deep belief in forgiveness and acceptance win our sympathy, if not our belief.
