Edisto

Edisto (along with its sequel, Edisto Revisited) is a novel I reread every couple years for the sheer pleasure of revisiting seriously underrated southern writer Padgett Powell’s account of a pivotal summer for the twelve-year-old Simon Manigault.

It’s the closest one can get to hitching a ride in a time machine back to an Edisto Island before gentrification, a chance to get yourself back to the garden. Take it. You won’t be sorry.

Edisto was the first coming-of-age novel I fell in love with as an adult reader and the book that showed me the tremendous literary potential of the genre. Padgett Powell endows his protagonist, twelve-year-old Simons, with what comes across as precociousness, but in fact reflects the depth of thinking that many young tweens and teens have. Simons wrestles with his narcissistic parents’ competing visions of his future—although neither bothers to ask him what he wants—while hanging out on the sultry island of Edisto off the coast of South Carolina with an enigmatic older acquaintance, Taurus, who offers him tastes of… show more.