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Loading... The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint: A Novelby Brady Udall
  
No current Talk conversations about this book. Loved this book. Great main character and loved the side characters. No one has a great life but there is hope. (  ) shazjhb | Jul 14, 2022 |  With an opening line like this - 'If I could tell you one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old the mailman ran over my head,' you were quickly drawn into this endearing tale. Despite the unlikelihood of surviving such an event, this book is captivating. After three months in a coma, Edgar wakes to find himself in a ward with other very damaged individuals and there he remains for close on two years. His only visitor, the Dr who resuscitated him, has since been dismissed. He is eventually transferred to a boarding school for Native Americans. The one major effect of the accident is Edgar has lost the ability to write. He can read but the words won't translate to the written page, so he is supplied with a typewriter. Arriving at the Willie Sherman boarding school armed with his typewriter and wearing a protective helmet he soon becomes the victim of bullies. He maintains contact with one of the other members of the hospital ward, who has his own demons. After surviving two years there, he is offered a home with a Mormon family. He thinks he has landed in his perfect life, feeling loved and cared for, for the first time. However, his past soon impacts on this happy episode and Edgar decides to pursue his quest of finding the mailman, to let him know he is okay, he did survive. This is a lengthy but heart-warming story peppered with eccentric, flawed characters. (  ) HelenBaker | Nov 15, 2021 | Did not like this book at all. The last chapter was well written, maybe cause I finally got thru it! (  ) LoriKBoyd | Mar 24, 2020 | One of those quirky-main-character tales, but this one was a bit too dark and depressing for me. (  ) suedutton | Sep 24, 2019 | "If I could tell you only one thing about my life it would be this: when I was seven years old, the mailman ran over my head."Did you laugh? If so, this book is for you (also, you are a friend of mine). I have loved this book since it came out in 2001, back when no one much wanted to read about bad things happening to children. Worth it for the love of a Hermes typewriter. ( ) Eoin | Jun 3, 2019 |
 Contemporary fiction is full of cynical, world-weary protagonists. One of the strengths of this big, uneven novel -- it reads at times like a John Irving novel touched up by Roy Blount Jr. -- is the lovely and complex character of Edgar, an innocent whose struggle to survive is at odds with his fundamentally gentle nature.  This novel is a wonderful, wise debut, with a strong story told in language that teens will find easy to embrace. Udall is too smart to lapse into sentimentality; he writes with such warmth and humor that Edgar's travails are endearing rather than horrifying. One of the strengths of this big, uneven novel -- it reads, at times like a John Irving novel touched up by Roy Blount Jr. -- is the lovely and complex character of Edgar, an innocent whose struggle to survive is at odds with his fundamentally gentle nature. Udall persuades us to care for Edgar, to root for him to survive, and he is so successful that by the end of the story the only unbelievable thing is that Edgar Mint is nothing but a figment of Brady Udall's imagination.
Half Apache and mostly orphaned, Edgar Presley Mint's trials begin on an Arizona reservation at the age of seven, when the mailman's jeep accidentally runs over his head. As he is shunted from the hospital to a school for delinquents to a Mormon foster family, comedy, pain, and trouble accompany Edgar through a string of larger-than-life experiences. Through it all, readers will root for this irresistible innocent who never truly loses heart and whose quest for the mailman leads him to an unexpected home. No library descriptions found. 
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.9)
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