The Boy With No Shoes: A Memoir

by WilliamHorwood (Author), William Horwood (Author)

• Used

  paperback
  

  $3.25

  Five-year-old Jimmy Rova is the unwanted child of a mother who rejects him, and whose other children bully him. The one thing he can call his own is a pair of shoes, a present from the only person he feels has ever loved him. When they are cruelly taken away, Jimmy spirals down into a state of loneliness and terrible loss from which there seems no recovery.

  This triumphant story of a boy's struggle with early trauma and his remarkable journey into adulthood is based on William Horwood's own remarkable childhood in south-east England after the Second World War. Using all the skills that went into the creation of his modern classics, Horwood has written an inspiring story of a journey from a past too painful to imagine to the future every child deserves.

• Used

  Paperback
  2004

  $3.25

  THE BOY WITH NO SHOES is struggling to exist in 1950s seaside Kent. His father is an abstract memory, his brother has been hollowed by abuse, at school he must face the soul-destroying Captain Flax and at home his mother has been washed away by family secrets. But Jimmy is a treasure-seeking hero who digs below the damage of abuse and drags up extraordinary acts of kindness. His is a world of long-forgotten ways -- longshoreman who comb the shores for stories, dens on clifftops that spark adventures, history lessons from local carpenter Arthur Sullivan and, at last, a pair of boots from The Royal Marines in exchange for cleaning the floors. In this triumphantly imaginative memoir, William Horwood captures painful loss of childhood innocence and shows us that honesty and comfort prevail.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2004

  $4.26

  Five-year-old Jimmy Rova is the unwanted child of a mother who rejects him, growing up among half-siblings who bully him. The one thing he can call his own is a pair of shoes, a present from the only person he feels has ever loved him. Only the arrival of his grandmother, and their move to a dilapidated house in the old fishing quarter of an east Kent coastal town -- where the warm-hearted community befriends Jimmy and shows him how to love and be loved -- reveals a way out. Based on his own remarkable childhood in south-east England after the Second World War and using all the skills that went into the creation of his modern classics Duncton Wood, Skallagrigg and The Willows in Winter, Horwood has created an inspiring story of childhood loss, personal survival and self-affirmation.

• New

  paperback
  

  $12.54

  Five-year-old Jimmy Rova is the unwanted child of a mother who rejects him, and whose other children bully him. The one thing he can call his own is a pair of shoes, a present from the only person he feels has ever loved him. When they are cruelly taken away, Jimmy spirals down into a state of loneliness and terrible loss from which there seems no recovery.

  This triumphant story of a boy's struggle with early trauma and his remarkable journey into adulthood is based on William Horwood's own remarkable childhood in south-east England after the Second World War. Using all the skills that went into the creation of his modern classics, Horwood has written an inspiring story of a journey from a past too painful to imagine to the future every child deserves.