Name: Rites of Passage
ISBN: 9780571209439

William Golding

On board a warship bound for Australia, Edmund Talbot writes a journal to entertain his godfather back in England, recording the mounting tensions with wit and disdain. Then one passenger, an obsequious clergyman, attracts the animosity of the crew.

Rites of Passage

Andrew John Kinney

Read this thirty years ago; it is the book for which Golding won the Nobel, and in my view he earned it. It is so much better than Lord of the Flies. The other two books in the series are good, but this one is the best. I love the early 19th Century dialogue, and the description of the burial at sea is particularly entertaining.