A tender and fierce account of boyhood and nascent homosexual desire First published in 1945, In Youth Is Pleasure is a beautiful and unassuming comingofage novel by the English writer and painter Denton Welch (191548). Painfully sensitive and sad Orville Pym is 15 years old, and this novel recounts the summer holiday after his first miserable year at private schoolbut as in all of Welchs work, what is most important are the details of his characters surroundings. Welch is a Proustian writer of uncanny powers of observation who, as William S. Burroughs wrote, "makes the reader aware of the magic that is right under his eyes." Film director John Waters includes this novel as one of his "Five Books You Should Read to Live a Happy Life If Something Is Basically the Matter with You," and writes "Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welchs In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger." Also included in this edition is the first US publication of "I Left My Grandfathers House." This firstperson account of an idyllic walking tour in the British countryside undertaken when Welch was 18 makes a fascinating companion piece to the fictionalized, though no less autobiographical, In Youth Is Pleasure.

Binding: Paperback;272 pages; Publisher: Distributed Art Publishers, Inc.; Classification: FA; Weight: 510 g; Dimensions: 152 x 203 x 18

Something not quite right? You have 28 days from the day you receive it, to send something back.

Please note, we cannot offer refunds on fashion face masks, cosmetics, pierced jewellery, adult toys, and swimwear or lingerie if the hygiene seal is not in place or has been broken.

Items of footwear and/or clothing must be unworn and unwashed with the original labels attached. Also, footwear must be tried on indoors. Items of homeware including bedlinen, mattresses, and toppers, and pillows must be unused and in their original unopened packaging. This does not affect your statutory rights.

Click here to view our full Returns Policy.