(Note: I'm referring to the uncut version with the black border.)
I beg to differ with other reviewers: this film, while not for 5 year olds and similarly-aged tykes, is well suited for older kids, because it teaches them a valuable lesson about the entertainment they're accustomed to--one they must learn anyway to avoid a world of make-believe and patronization. It teaches them the truth behind the popular fantasies of superheroes--namely that even the best and brightest of us can grow dimmer with age, and suffer trauma and horrifying memories; that even the best and brightest of us are prey to the fundamental limitations involved in being human.
This novel was also anthologized in the "Archer At Large" omnibus, which contains a revealing, fascinating foreward by MacDonald, who stated that The Galton Case was his "break-through book." And then he diclosed the numerous--and poignant--autobiographical parallels he had with the novel.
The Galton Case has a realistic, painful and angry intensity not present in any other Archer novels I've read--perhaps because MacDonald had put more of his life and sorrows into this book than in any other; into the examination of how the sins of the fathers ruin their sons' lives. For MacDonald every family is riddled with moral cancer: skeletons can never be fully shoved into the closet, especially… Read more
This short, remarkable book moves with a style of its own, and is quite an achievement. Grimsley is an assured stylist who gets away with what a lot of writers usually don't--continually using the present tense and sounding natural. Lots of people have used the adjective "dreamy" in regards to "Dream Boy"--like a dream the book is both ambiguous, hazy and soft and also truly vivid, hallucinatory, and deeply felt. Grimsley has the gift of quickly establishing character in a few strokes, and his protagonists Roy and Nathan are both spectres and boys you probably encountered growing up.
It's possible to say that a book sounds "right" without having personal… Read more
