The Lord of the Flies is a book which draws a line in the sand between childhood and adulthood and watches a group of boys pitch and fall, this way and that, back and forth over that line. Those of us who read it at school are unlikely to forget the sense of having a dangerous adult world opened to us and those who read it as adults cannot help but be reminded of the reality of being a child: the amorality, the bonded relationships, the sheer seriousness of the world... For many people Lord of the Flies is "one of those books" that never quite leaves you, no matter when you read it first.
I'm not a huge fan of Folio Society books because, as a bookseller, I normally see them en masse, and I can't avoid the feeling that seeing them in such numbers dilutes the real care with which they are designed and created as individual books. So I was completely charmed by the Folio Society 2009 edition of the book which I picked up today. The cover design by Sam Weber is direct and haunting and the illustrations simply beautiful. It appears to still be in print and can be ordered from The Folio Society website.
