SOLVED. by Aldous Huxley I think, maybe Golding [s]

[globulon]

I thought this was Crome Yellow but reading the description of that book doesn't seem right.

What I remember was that the main character starts as an adolescent male, and grows through maybe a year or two of university through the book. I believe it takes place in rural England. The boy works in a pharmacy, I believe his father might have been a pharmacist, or he goes to school to be one or both. I believer there's also a scene where he rapes a girl he knows. I believe this scene takes place on a hill near their town. The boy is pretty callous about the event as I remember. Thanks.

I read it in the early 90's but I believe it is a fair bit older than that but probably written after WWII. Not positive though.

[Mir]

If it was by Huxley, he died in 1963, if that helps.

[April Ann]

The Pyramid by William Golding, Originally published in London 1967.

Summary:
Oliver lives in an English village from the 1920s through the late 1940s, living through many experiences as he matures.

Kirkus Reviews Yet once more, o ye laurels? No, not from dissertation writers and literary quarterlies, who may not know quite what to make of Golding's latest. A careful, subdued story of one young man's passage from adolescence to reminiscence, from the 20's through the 40's, from the village of Stillbourne to Oxford and back, The Pyramid builds itself with dogged detachment and gradual accretions of meaning. Oliver, son of a limp pharmacist, has a few initiatory bouts with a bitter young town sexpot; an unwilling romp in the town musical show; and (the best part of the three) violin lessons from Miss Dawlish, a town eccentric beguiled by her driving teacher. Demands are made on this unresponsive, not terribly interesting hero, who tells it all in a first person sometimes arch, sometimes fine. If there's an allegory here, it's less cut and dried and ready for exegesis than is usual with Golding. Way of All Flesh rendered by Updike, the labellers might say...meanwhile, it can and will be read at face value, no great shakes but a pleasant climb.
(Kirkus Reviews, October 1, 1967)

[globulon]

thanks alot! that looks like it must be it. funny thing is that the title still doesn't ring a bell. Somehow this book must have just got stuck with the other title in my mind.

Actually, as I think about it, I vaguely remember a conversation about the significance of the title with my girlfriend of the time. Thanks again.