The Honorary Member

Peter Roberts is the former Canadian Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

The literary antecedents of this small book are Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry
Finn, and, by a wider stretch of the imagination, David Copperfield. But
Edward Cloney is no Mark Twain or Charles Dickens. His literary
objectives are modest and he has a hard time with language. His story of
one summer in the life of Danny, a young boy in small-town Nova Scotia
30 years ago, is brought to a clumsy and unsatisfying end in an epilogue
that reveals in a few, brief sentences what happened in several
successive summers.

Yet sentimental, even mawkish, as it sometimes is, the book has merit.
Cloney has something to say about the need young people have to “get
away,” both physically and in their imaginations. When Danny “gets
away,” the improbable happens: he finds the initials of his long-dead
father carved on a rock; sees the ocean for the first time; has a brief
conversation with Soviet cosmonaut Yury Gagarin; goes to jail; and
escapes.

Young adults would derive pleasure and profit from reading this book.
So would their parents.