Pride

In the first chapter of Pride, William Wharton misleads the reader into thinking that the book is "about" the sin of Pride. The main character Dickie is a fifth grader in Catholic school in 1938, and whatever disciplinary excesses Catholic schools had in the 1960s they had and more in the 1930s. A lapse of attention and an unfortunate sequence of events lands Dickie in the priest's office, where he is told that his sin is Pride. The boy, his neighborhood in Depression-era Philadelphia, and his school, would be enough to make a book around. But from the boy's discovery of an orphaned kitten the story takes a different direction. Anti-union thugs at Dickie's father's workplace threaten the safety of Dickie and his sister, so the family (with kitten) takes an out of season trip to the Jersey shore. The book then alternates point of view between Dickie and Cap Modison, a savant farm boy who was damaged in the first world war. Where Dickie has his kitten Cannibal, Cap adopted a lion cub, who he named Tuffy. Tuffy has become a mature male lion and acts like Cap's kitten. Cap and his wife and Tuffy are working an improbable boardwalk attraction involving a gravity-defying motorcycle. Just as Dickie's parents find a renewal in their relationship in focusing on the instinctive need to protect their children, Cap and Tuffy have formed a little lion pride into which strangers can be reluctantly admitted. Pride is about families and the courage that is needed to keep them together. I would recommend Pride to male and female readers who enjoy a memoir-based story with a dash of literary pretension.

I prefer to remain a reader rather than a reviewer. Nevertheless.. let me recommend this book, that I really liked when I read the Italian translation a few years ago.