In his new nov­el, The Palace at the End of the Sea, Simon Tolkien chron­i­cles the ear­ly life of Theo Ster­ling. At a piv­otal moment, Theo is ripped from the inno­cence of child­hood and thrown into the con­fus­ing, impres­sion­able, and often­times lone­ly expe­ri­ence of ado­les­cence. In many ways a clas­sic com­ing-of-age tale, but by no means uno­rig­i­nal, Tolkien’s lat­est work com­bines mas­ter­ful sto­ry­telling, immer­sive his­tor­i­cal detail, and dynam­ic char­ac­ter development.

Tolkien’s cap­ti­vat­ing prose is flu­id and unob­tru­sive, free­ing the read­er to engage more deeply with the story’s sub­stance. Over the course of the nov­el, the author cap­tures the unique char­ac­ter and ener­gy of Theo’s shift­ing envi­ron­ments — from Depres­sion-era New York City to a hal­lowed Eng­lish board­ing school, to a small town in south­ern Spain. 

The author also imbues his pro­tag­o­nist with depth and invests in the rela­tion­ships between Theo and those around him. Theo wants to be his own man, but through­out his tumul­tuous youth he is forced to con­tend with the impact and ide­olo­gies of his fam­i­ly and friends. From an ear­ly age, he is weighed down by the bag­gage of his par­ents – his father’s rejec­tion of Jew­ish­ness and unwa­ver­ing belief in the Amer­i­can dream, and his mother’s devo­tion to Catholi­cism in the face of trau­mat­ic reli­gious per­se­cu­tion. As time goes by, Theo finds him­self drawn to men­tors and friends offer­ing rev­o­lu­tion­ary ideas, much to the cha­grin of oth­ers in his life. With each instance of per­son­al upheaval, as well as a grow­ing aware­ness of the chal­lenges fac­ing the world in his time, Theo is caught between notions of tra­di­tion and rev­o­lu­tion­ary change, weigh­ing whether to sub­mit to what is expect­ed of him, to embrace new ideas, or to sim­ply fol­low his heart.

Around the mid­point of the nov­el, Theo’s school­mate and friend says to him, ​“The trou­ble with you, Theo, is that you think you can have your cake and eat it. And maybe you can for now, but one day, soon­er or lat­er, you’re going to have to choose. You’re going to have to decide which side you’re on.” While Theo makes choic­es of great sig­nif­i­cance through­out his youth, by the end of the book he has yet to make that ulti­mate choice pro­posed by his friend. Clear­ly, read­ers will have to wait for Vol­ume Two of Tolkien’s duol­o­gy to find out what will become of Theo Ster­ling as he con­tin­ues his jour­ney through ado­les­cence and into adulthood.