Maurice’s Room by Paula Fox

PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF PAULA FOX
    Winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award
    Winner of the Paris Review’s Hadada Award
    â€œThe greatest writer of her generation.” —Jonathan Franzen
    â€œOne of America’s most talented writers.” —Publishers Weekly
    â€œConsistently excellent.” —The New York Times
    â€œFox has always been adept at writing apparently simple stories which on closer examination prove to explore the essential meaning of relationships … and to illuminate our understanding of the human condition.” —School Library Journal
    â€œPaula Fox is so good a novelist that one wants to go out in the street to hustle up a big audience for her.… Fox’s brilliance has a masochistic aspect: I will do this so well, she seems to say, that you will hardly be able to read it. And so she does, and so do I.” —Peter S. Prescott, Newsweek
    â€œFox is one of the most attractive writers to come our way in a long, long time.” — The New Yorker
    â€œAs a writer, Fox is all sensitive, staring eyeball. Her images break the flesh. They scratch the retina … Fox’s prose hurts.” —Walter Kirn, New York magazine
    â€œFox’s achievement is to write with magnificent restraint and precision about the interplay of personal and historical, inner growth and outer framework, the process of learning to think about oneself and the world.” —Margaret and Michael Rustin
    â€œFox has little of Roth’s self-consciousness, less of Bellow’s self-importance, and none of Updike’s self-pity. Unlike all three men, Fox does not jealously save the best lines for a favoured alter ego, and her protagonists do not have a monopoly on nuance. Instead, she distributes her formidable acumen unselfishly, so that even the most minor characters can suddenly offer crucial insight, and unsympathetic characters are often the most fascinating: brilliant, unfathomable and raging.” —Sarah Churchwell
    â€œThere are no careless moves in the fiction of Paula Fox.… [Her] work has a purity of vision, and a technique undiminished by homage or self-indulgence.” —Randal Churb, The Boston Review
    â€œPaula Fox is as good as her revived reputation suggests.” —Fiona Maazel, BOMB
    Maurice’s Room
    â€œExcellent dialogue … Lively pace and the familiar subject blend beautifully in this exceptionally fine tale.” —The New York Times Book Review
    â€œHere is that rare thing—a new character arriving to join the Club of Rare Characters.… Maurice, with an assist from his dedicated friend Jacob, is a collector.… Don’t you hesitate a moment to collect Maurice’s Room !” —Publishers Weekly
    â€œVery straightforward, very easy to read, and very funny. Eight year old boys will be able to make a place for it—under their beds, or wherever it is they keep their favorite books.” —Kirkus Reviews
    â€œ[Maurice] is enchantingly real, his family is real, and his friend Jacob … is real. They are all charming, and their intended audience of middle-grades readers will be augmented by secret, older admirers.” —Saturday Review

Maurice’s Room
    Paula Fox

FOR GABE

1. THE COLLECTION
    Maurice’s room measured six long steps in one direction and five in the other. The distance from the floor to the ceiling was three times higher than Maurice. There was one window through which Maurice could see several other windows as well as a piece of the sky. From the middle of the ceiling dangled a long string, the kind used to tie up packages of laundry. Attached to the end of the string was a dried octopus. It was the newest addition to Maurice’s collection. When his mother or father walked into his room—which wasn’t often—the octopus swung back and forth a little in the draught.
    Maurice had used a ladder to climb up high enough to