Tom Sawyer: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer / Tom Sawyer Abroad / Tom Sawyer, Detective by Mark Twain
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I suppose to some degree, Twain captures the American boyhood in a way that was uncaptured before. He expresses a part of life that was not deemed to be of interest. In this, Twain comes to elegantly encapsulate what makes America America. With all that is told, much of this is as trite as you’d expect, although Twain is able to say something through the innocence of the characters about human beings, human nature and respect for the other, even with the classism and racism as we would understand it now.
In many ways the characters are cartoony without meaning to be. Twain’s writing is well paced but it also has the particular twists of quality you’d expect from him, where he is too clever with the plot, too clever with the characters. I suppose our tastes are out of alignment with his.
