Mocky's Revinge: A Novelette

By Mark Louis Lehman

Combining tart humor, playful language, and a serious moral dimension, this unusual novelette depicts the growing friendship between just-turning-eight Carrie Ann Watson and her Uncle Mocky, a wry,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0977032620
• ISBN13: 9780977032624
• Release Date: December 2005
• Publisher: Little Possum Pr
• Length: 128 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.8" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

happy with mocky

good read. very diff. style of writing, but creatively done. endearing characters you will think about and relate to. a great first effort by the author.

Charming narrator is this story's triumph

I really enjoyed and was enthralled by the voice of Carrie Ann Watson, this book's first-person eight-year-old narrator. This author has really captured a young person's perspective, desires and intelligence. She shines off the pages and more than once put me in mind of Harper Lee's heroine Scout Finch.

"Revinge" is So Sweet

Author Lehmann's narrator, Carrie Ann Watson, is the beleaguered, resourceful, emotional, touching nearly 8-year-old who's moved to write this story of the summer that her "outsider," big-city Uncle Mocky came to her small Ohio town to visit his dying father, her grandfather. This unforgettable novelette is made even more personal by the narrator's take-no-prisoners approach to spelling; if she's heard a word, she can spell it. For instance, you'll meet her older sister, Mariah, a "pre-Madonna too busy to play with her little sister," and the book's title is not a typo but pure Carrie wrestling with grown-up words. The spelling mishaps are often puns--offering some gamesmanship, as I struggled a few times to get the meaning and wouldn't go on until I had unlocked the words. But it's the simple but insightful narrator you'll always remember. As I read, I kept wondering what Uncle Mocky's "revinge" was going to be, and when you learn Carrie's part in it, you might fear that this tender-yet-tough kid might be a Bad Seed in the making. But I say not to worry, for devilish though it may be, there is a poignant denouement (what would Carrie do to that word?) for Mocky and Carrie. This "novel written by an 8-year-old" is an understandably short book--but one long on resonance.

Deceptively simple and very moving

I found this short novel to be haunting and deeply moving, with a remarkable sensitivity to the inner world and mode of expression of a child. Two other items came to mind as I was reading it: A Death in the Family, by James Agee, and the film Slingblade. Lehman uses the idiosyncratic spelling of an 8-year-old to convey the mind of a child; this and the regional dialect provide an interesting and amusing dimension, but they are really only a small aspect of its impact as a whole. The whole issue of revenge and the question of whether one can gain from it the satisfaction often used to justify it is quite a profound matter, and one that is always relevant. I was just describing the book to a friend of mine this morning, and as I was talking I realized how much substance and detail there was to it despite its brevity. I sincerely hope that it reaches even a small portion of its potential audience, as I am sure a broad range of readers would react as I have.