Showing results for "Spider" in Coming of Age

If you think the only thing Ellison writes is speculative fiction, craziness about giant cockroaches that attack Detroit, or invaders from space who look like pink eggplant and smell like chicken soup, this dynamite novel of the emergent days of rock and roll will turn you around at least three times. No spaceships, no robots, just a nice kid from Louisville named Stag Preston with a voice like an angel, seductive moves like the devil, and an invisible monkey named Success riding him straight to hell.

Ellis is obsessed with the spiders that inhabit the crumbling house where he lives with his dad, his older sister and Great-Aunt Mafi - and by a need to find out more about his mother, whose death overshadows the family's otherwise happy existence. He is a sensitive soul - awkward and out of place most of the time but funny, too, and with an embarrassing habit of speaking his thoughts aloud, whatever the company.

It’s bad enough that its venom-dripping chelicerae can slice through flesh like warm butter. Worse? It’s right there under the bunk. It’s a fact now. To make it through the night, the children must obey the rules: don’t get out of bed, stay out of the shadows, and don’t wake the beast. But as the threats multiply, so do the rules of survival. And with the safety of dawn still hours away, the fun is just beginning.