What do you think?
Rate this book
Mark
The work of a superbly gifted writer at the height of his powers, Lonnie Coleman's Mark is destined to become a classic—the wonderfully moving story of a young man growing up in a small Southern town. It is a novel about the lives of ordinary people, the exploration of feeling, the capacity to love, the discovery of sexual choice.
Set in Montgomery, Alabama, and Savannah, Georgia, in the twenties and thirties, Mark is the story of a young boy, orphaned by the death of both parents and raised by his aunt and uncle, from adolescence to adulthood, and ending with the outbreak of World War II. The novel is filled with abundant life, with the characters so totally perceived that we feel we have known them for years: Marshall, who dazzles and entertains Mark with his wild theatricality; Alice, a schoolgirl Katharine Hepburn, who enchants him with her aloofness; Margaret Torrence, his teacher, ally, and mentor, intolerant of pretense and dishonesty, who encourages his talent as a writer; Carl, who answers the need Mark has always felt, but never quite understood, by teaching him to trust and to love.
Lonnie Coleman has written a novel of one man's life that is also a novel about human beings, families, friends, teachers—good and bad—small-town American, the Depression, strength, courage, success, and failure. The author knows the lives of people in small southern towns intimately. He writes of them sensitively, yet is never sentimental; with dialogue that is often devastatingly funny, sometimes poignant, yet always true; with characters that are flawed and lovable in their humanity, yet never stereotyped.
A writer of great integrity and insight, who perceives emotional states in all their subtlety, Lonnie Coleman has created in Mark the sense of real characters, of life truly lived, of the inward transformation of a human being from childhood into maturity.
Like James Agee's A Death in the Family and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Lonnie Coleman's Mark transcends its locale to speak to every reader everywhere.
Set in Montgomery, Alabama, and Savannah, Georgia, in the twenties and thirties, Mark is the story of a young boy, orphaned by the death of both parents and raised by his aunt and uncle, from adolescence to adulthood, and ending with the outbreak of World War II. The novel is filled with abundant life, with the characters so totally perceived that we feel we have known them for years: Marshall, who dazzles and entertains Mark with his wild theatricality; Alice, a schoolgirl Katharine Hepburn, who enchants him with her aloofness; Margaret Torrence, his teacher, ally, and mentor, intolerant of pretense and dishonesty, who encourages his talent as a writer; Carl, who answers the need Mark has always felt, but never quite understood, by teaching him to trust and to love.
Lonnie Coleman has written a novel of one man's life that is also a novel about human beings, families, friends, teachers—good and bad—small-town American, the Depression, strength, courage, success, and failure. The author knows the lives of people in small southern towns intimately. He writes of them sensitively, yet is never sentimental; with dialogue that is often devastatingly funny, sometimes poignant, yet always true; with characters that are flawed and lovable in their humanity, yet never stereotyped.
A writer of great integrity and insight, who perceives emotional states in all their subtlety, Lonnie Coleman has created in Mark the sense of real characters, of life truly lived, of the inward transformation of a human being from childhood into maturity.
Like James Agee's A Death in the Family and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, Lonnie Coleman's Mark transcends its locale to speak to every reader everywhere.
- GenresFiction
319 pages, Hardcover
First published June 29, 1981
1 person is currently reading
21 people want to read
About the author
Lonnie Coleman
30 books17 followersBorn William Laurence "Lonnie" Coleman. American novelist and playwright best known for writing the Beulah Land trilogy. His first novel was published in 1944. Coleman was an associate editor at Ladies Home Journal, 1947-1950, and at Collier's, 1951-1955.
Coleman's 1959 novel "Sam" is considered a groundbreaking novel in American literature in its depiction of homosexuality and metropolitan gay life.
In 1974, his book "Beulah Land" was a New York Times Best Seller. His novels "Beulah Land" and "Look Away, Beulah Land" were filmed in 1980 as the NBC miniseries Beulah Land starring Lesley Ann Warren, Michael Sarrazin. Meredith Baxter, and Don Johnson.
Coleman had three plays produced on Broadway, but none were successful.
Coleman's 1959 novel "Sam" is considered a groundbreaking novel in American literature in its depiction of homosexuality and metropolitan gay life.
In 1974, his book "Beulah Land" was a New York Times Best Seller. His novels "Beulah Land" and "Look Away, Beulah Land" were filmed in 1980 as the NBC miniseries Beulah Land starring Lesley Ann Warren, Michael Sarrazin. Meredith Baxter, and Don Johnson.
Coleman had three plays produced on Broadway, but none were successful.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 1, 2013
I only read this book because i liked author's novel Beulah land---- this one not ---A few interesting characters, but will try other works of Coleman
Displaying 1 of 1 review