Following his memoirs (Twelve Years; In the House of My Fear) and translations, Joel Agee's first novel, The Stone World, is a dreamy, haunting immersion in the mind of a child in a gravely serious adult world. The story spans mere months in the life of six-and-a-half-year-old Peter, who prefers to go by Pira, as his Mexican friends pronounce his name. This is a quietly profound study of boyhood, in some ways almost humdrum: Pira writes a poem, borrows a significant item from a parent and breaks it (and lies about it), falls out with a friend, learns about the world. But the backdrop is late-1940s Mexico, where Pira lives with his American mother and German communist "second father" (his biological father lives in New York), and they rub shoulders with a range of characters: American, Hungarian, Mexican, rich, poor, activists and organizers and artists, including Frida Kahlo.
Pira is prone to involved imaginings, including dreams and waking visions. Through the eyes of this curious, philosophical, sensitive child, the whole world is fresh and new, colorful, beautiful and dangerous. Joel Agee is the son of celebrated novelist James Agee, and Pira's life resembles his creator's, who likewise lived in Mexico with his mother and German stepfather in the late 1940s. The politics of his parents and their friends are initially boring to young Pira, but real-life risks and even arrests bring the issues home to him. In the hands of such a skilled and nuanced writer, this material exudes both beauty and menace. --Julia Kastner, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia