Iona Moon

by Melanie Rae Thon

Book Overview

For Jay and Willie, town-dwelling sons of the local dentist and policeman respectively, adulthood starts for all of them the year that Matt Fry came back from prison. Life would never be the same... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0452272807
• ISBN13: 9780452272804
• Release Date: October 1994
• Publisher: Plume Books
• Length: 315 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The best

This is my favourite book ever, it's filled with sadness and makes me feel better about my life. I love how the story is just about life and doesnot have a main plot, such as catching a murderer. This book brought me down to tears.

the wounded heart is human

I came across this book after reading an excert in another source and knew I wanted to read more of it. Concerned primarily with Iona Moon, a skinny dirt-poor farmer's daughter, and the teens she hangs out with (including boys who would be glad to be with her, if she meets them at the movies, buys her own ticket and leaves alone), this book at times approaches the lyrical in its description of human heartbreak. For a young woman searching for love, there are few good options - mothers in this book are dead - either emotionally or literally, and yet, they are also the healers and the "hopers" who provide the voice and the strength to go on - whether the voice of Iona's own dead mother or Pearl, the mother of her Indian lover who heals her with the taste of bitterness. This book combines the smallness of small towns with their narrow class structures and small minds along with the expanse of nature - rivers that run and skies that extend forever, working as a metaphor for the human heart that can dream large and wide, but must return to the narrow confines of the practical in life - where the cows need milking, the choices are few and the easist way out of town is not the road, but death. "Sorrow came in soft waves. She saw that the smallest sacrifices were the ones that drowned you in the end." Still, the book is as full of hope and heart as it is of heartbreak. Thought out of print, it is worth tracking down and reading.

It was a GREAT read, and I was sorry to see it end.

This book is great, and an awsome read. It has it's funny moments of growing up, and discusses the things that everyone tried to forget when they were little. I was really sorry to finally be on the last page because i felt that i would be perfectly content to read forever the story of iona moon. out of the other books by Thon, i thought this was the best book she has written, and was delivered perfectly to a reader. Don't pass this one by!

easily my favorite book

Melanie Rae Thon's use of language is unrivaled...Iona Moon has long been the book I marvel at over and over again. I am saddened that it is out of print and strongly encourage her next publisher to re-release this beautiful, poignant novel. Her genius deserves greater recognition, and a wide readership.

A realistic, dismal view of life erotically captured

This book offers a glimpse into the dreary life of a group of young people in a rural Idaho town and their struggles to gain sexual experience while at the same time trying to gain an understanding of their own minds and motivation. Ambiguities abound and friendships redefine themselves. Melanie Thon does an excellent job of taking the reader along with the heroine Iona, through all of her troubles and fears and her attempts to break free of the life of drudgery for which she seems destined. Highly recommended! Twilight Blu