The premise: A planeload of young boys is marooned on a nameless tropical island and they are forced to fend for themselves. If this novel had been written in the 19th century it would have been about the cheery, whimsical never-neverland the boys created. But in Golding's version, the veneer of childish purity wears away quickly in the absence of adults, and the boys become two warring tribes, one under the saintly Ralph and his asthmatic sidekick Piggy, one under the savage ex-choir-leader Jack. Golding tracks the fall of this new Eden with pitiless, meticulous care and total psychological clarity, and in the process he ruthlessly strips away the myths and cliches of childhood innocence forever.—L.G.