The Merry-Go-Round Man by John B. RosenmanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Based on the cover, my mind went directly to romance and internally, I groaned. Thank the book gods, The Merry-Go Round Man by John Rosenman is most definitely not romance. The term Merry-Go Round Man refers to a title given to one of three boys who can clamber to the top of a school merry-go-round the quickest in the 1950s. Johnny is the central character, a gifted boxer and artist torn between his gifts and his disapproving father. Lee is an aspiring pro-football player destined to be a womanizer and Jimmy is the lone black student at their elite private school. This is 1954 so the lives of these three boys is drastically different, their experiences widely varied from one another. We watch them grow up, struggle, fail, persevere, and mature in this coming of age tale that is far more than the usual in that vein of novels.
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