The Folded Leaf - Softcover

"A true, beautiful and profoundly poignant novel. It is so good it almost seems miraculous" (New York Times)

"Few voices have charted the end of boyhood and the coming of adult wisdom as subtly and humanely as Maxwell in this profound, atmospheric work which is as moving as it is shrewd and often funny" (Irish Times)

"So fresh is Maxwell's wisdom on adolescent insecurities, hesitancies and blind hero-worship that it is hard to imagine that his words are more than half a century old" (Sunday Times)

"A novel of major quality, the fruit of real engagement with other people and the course of their lives" (Independent on Sunday)

"As the voices of Austen, Turgenev and Tolstoy have survived, so will Maxwell's" (The Times)

The path to adulthood is littered with broken friendships.

In the suburbs of 1920s Chicago two boys form an unlikely friendship. Lymie Peters is thin, pigeon-chested and terrible at games. That he is an A-grade scholar is no compensation; it is Spud Latham, slow at school but quick to fight and a natural athlete, who is everything he longs to be. Spud accepts Lymie's devotion to him as unquestioningly as Lymie offers it. But as they travel from school to college, tensions start to surface. It is Lymie who first meets Sally Forbes, but it is Spud she falls in love with. It signals the end of the young men's intimacy and the break is almost more than Lymie can bear.