Mocky's Revinge: A Novelette Book

Combining tart humor, playful language, and a serious moral dimension, this unusual novelette depicts the growing friendship between just-turning-eight Carrie Ann Watson and her Uncle Mocky, a wry, gentle, and openly gay French teacher who has returned to his home town to reconcile with his dying father. Set in the mid 1980s, the story is told as a "novel" written by Carrie herself, complete with all her linguistic idiosyncrasies and unvarnished candor. The result is funny and touching, but hardly an idealized portrait of childhood as a state of grace.