Greenberg, Joanne (Goldenberg) - Roger Sale
ROGER SALE
[All but one of the stories in "Rites of Passage"] are just stories, instances where the energy and trust have gone into seeing how the story can best be told and not into the characters and events themselves. The exception is the title story, about a boy who feels he has been denied the opportunity to become a man because he has been raised by maiden relatives and who leaps at a chance to prove himself by going to work on a farm. The farmer turns out to be old, broken down, paranoiac about other farmers he is sure are out to destroy him and take his land, especially about his neighbor, Koven, who he imagines to be spying on him, poisoning his stream, digging potholes in his road etc.…
[Greenberg] knows how important it is for her boy hero to gain a father…. As a result, she never tries to explain or justify the boy's eagerness to earn the trust of the old farmer or to entangle himself in the other's follies. When the boy agrees to kill the...
[The entire page is 427 words long]
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