synopsis:

'the runaway soul' consists of a stream-of-consciousness narration by Wiley Silenowicz, adopted in 1930 and raised by his cousins S. L. & Lila Silenowicz in St. Louis. possessed of a fiercely observant intelligence that unfolds experience endlessly like a flower, Wiley must abide a glamorous, self-absorbed mother, an obnoxious sister and a smooth-talking father.

In the course of the novel, Wiley grows up, observes his parents, suffers his sister, experiences sexual longing and then sex. In short, nothing much happens except language: Brodkey's lush, carefully observed antidote to minimalism that will alternately enthrall and exasperate readers; In a series of vignettes, slowly accruing into the story of his life, Wiley's neuroses are examined and explained, most of them attributable to the suppurating wound of his natural mother's death.

on this book:

this is The brodkey's debut novel and was Originally called "Party with Animals". The literary world waited 25 years for Harold Brodkey's first novel, which was therefore titled "The most famous unpublished work in America".

Though 'The Runaway Soul' eventually came to an end, the life of its protagonist, Wiley Silenowicz, goes on in the posthumously published collection of short stories, 'The World Is the Home of Love and Death'.