My God, what a beautiful book! That was all I could think as I read the final page and closed this book, The Folded Leaf. And there was this sense of wonder too, that William Maxwell lives on in this small masterpiece, first published over 60 years ago. I have made it a habit in recent years to try to contact authors whose works I read and admire. Maxwell died in 2000 though, so I felt instead this awful sudden sadness at the passing of a man I never met. But he left behind this book, this message from the past, which imparts such a detailed picture of what it was like to be young and alive - and in love - back in the 1920s. Because this is much more than just a story of an intense and important friendship between two boys, and then, young men. There are definite and obvious homoerotic undertones in the relationship between Lymie and Spud, but this repressed impulse is never acted upon. It remains unsullied, and Lymie's feelings - his love - for Spud are as pure and unselfish as you will ever find in literature. Their relationship is perhaps best expressed - culminated - in a scene that takes place in a hospital room after a crisis has been narrowly averted -

"Neither he nor Lymie spoke. They looked at each other with complete knowledge at last, with full awareness of what they meant to each other and of all that had passed between them. After a moment Spud leaned forward slowly and kissed Lymie on the mouth. He had never done this before and he was never moved to do it again."

This is not, however, a book about homosexuality. This is a book about loneliness and about the paramount importance of friendship. I will say it again. This is a beautiful book. ( )

I found this book when I was in college and enjoyed it very much, both for the story and the writing style. William Maxwell is one of the best writers I have encountered over the years and I have reread this novel and others written by him. ( )

Slightly Foxed inspired me to buy this

I finished William Maxwell’s The Folded Leaf over the weekend, and like all Maxwell’s writing it’s a sustained piece of extraordinarily good writing even though its theme is commonplace. The book is definitely worth a second reading.

At heart it’s an intense portrait of the male adolescent experience of Lymie Peters, a frail, bookish boy and Spud Latham, who is everything Lymie aspires to be - strong, athletic and independent, and the love between Lymie and Spud is one of the novel's chief themes. I may be off base here, and would be interested in hearing from anyone who has read the book, but my guess is that Maxwell intended to depict the friendship as platonic, although it’s easy to interpret the sensual descriptions and scenes of male attraction as overtly sexual, and the relationship as a latent homosexual attachment. However, although the strong homoerotic element in the boys' relationship is obvious, it is ultimately irrelevant. The book is an engaging portrait of male adolescence and coming of age plagued by self doubt and loneliness in the 1920's in Chicago, no more, no less.

I hate to say this because I expect so much from Maxwell, but for all the good writing, I was disappointed in the final upbeat chapter that turns a tragic event into an emotional epiphany. It’s just not believable, and left me wondering how it could so finally be resolved.