In Youth Is Pleasure

A gay classic coming-of-age novel and an unforgettable slice of British interwar upper-middle class life

Orvil Pym does not fit in. A waifish, eccentric, sensitive fifteen-year-old, he hates school and longs to be alone. Spending his summer holidays in a genteel Surrey hotel with his mysterious father and two brothers who don't understand him, he explores ancient churches, spies on a man rowing in the river and collects antiques, escaping into his own singular aesthetic world. Flagrantly controversial on first publication in 1945, this is an unforgettable portrayal of a young man's sensuous coming of age.