This is an auction for THE BOY AND THE SEA, by Kirsty Gunn.

"In Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, an ageing fisherman sets out on a near-fatal voyage in which he attempts to reverse his ill fortune through a heroic struggle with a shark-sized marlin. It is, in a sense, a rites of passage novel, relating not a boy's passage into manhood, but an old man's refusal to relinquish his masculinity as his strength and health begin to fail. Your manliness, according to Hemingway, can be measured by your ability to prevail over the murderous forces of the sea. The sea, naturally, is a female entity. Hemingway was not a great feminist. Kirsty Gunn's novel adopts the same boy/man versus sea/woman notion and applies it to contemporary teenage American surfers. There is not a "dude" to be found, however, and the parallels with Hemingway are not remotely played for laughs. This is a profoundly serious novel, though the social group it describes is rarely written about, or presented on film, as anything other than a laughing stock."

• The Guardian

Paperback 2006.

136 pages.

Very good condition.

The cost of shipping is $4.95.

There is of course no charge for shipping if you collect this book from my shop in Palmerston North following the auction.

Payment within seven days, please.