City Boy: The Adventures of Herbie Bookbinder is a 1948 novel by Herman Wouk. The second novel written by Wouk, City Boy was largely ignored by the reading public until the success of The Caine Mutiny resurrected interest in Wouk's writing. Like The Caine Mutiny, the novel is semi-biographical in setting and situations, if not protagonist. In 1969 the novel was re-issued in paperback, and again in 1980 and 1992, and has been widely published in many languages. Wouk, in a preface to a later edition, states that he conceived Herbie Bookbinder as a modest version of a city-dwelling Huckleberry Finn.
| Author | Herman Wouk |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | General fiction |
| Publisher | Doubleday |
Publication date | 1948 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and Paperback) |
| Pages | 336 (Paperback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0316955116 (Paperback edition) {{isbn}}: Check isbn value: invalid character (help) |
In many of his novels Wouk evinces through his characters a love of Dickens, particularly in use of language to set mood. In City Boy he devises humorous twists of language to set a less-than-serious tone throughout this coming-of-age story. Also like Dickens, Wouk expertly manages a large cast of characters, including more than a dozen adults woven in-and-out of a narrative about children, with depictions that ring true both in description and actions.
Set in the spring and summer of 1928, City Boy spins the tale of an 11-year-old Jewish boy in the Bronx, New York. The novel first follows Herbert Bookbinder through the final days of school at New York Public School P.S. Seventy-Five, and then through a summer spent at Camp Manitou, a summer camp in the Catskill Mountains operated by his school's principal. Herbie's city world is one of endless daydreams and small urban pleasures: playing in empty lots, going to the movies on Saturday, arguing with friends around a forbidden campfire, eating "frappes" at the candy store, and going out to eat at a neighborhood restaurant.
Herbie is an exceptionally bright but fat little boy, a seventh grader and a star pupil. Although a poor athlete, Herbie yearns to be a "regular guy" among his schoolboy peers and constantly struggles against the consequences of his own quick wit and natural clumsiness with his rival, Lennie Krieger, the son of the business partner of Herbie's father, Jacob Bookbinder. Both blessed and cursed with a highly-active imagination, Herbie is also on the verge of adolescence, and the story revolves around his continuing quest to win the heart of the fickle, red-haired Lucille Glass.
Herbie, his parents, and his thirteen-year-old sister, Felicia, dwell in an aging Homer Avenue apartment house. Jacob Bookbinder is founder and part owner of an industrial ice-making plant, known to Herbie and his cousin Cliff Block as "The Place," a ___location that plays both a significant role in Herbie's fate and an adult sub-plot that frames the climax of the story.
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