Life, seen through the prism of the perception of a child or teenager, is one of the favorite themes of American southern writers, which they have trodden, it would seem, far and wide. But never, perhaps, has this life appeared so suffocating and claustrophobic as in the novel “The Neon Bible,” written by the wunderkind of American literature John Kennedy Toole at the age of 16. A tiny town, choking in humid heat and swamp fumes, is one of those provincial holes, the likes of which never existed and never count in the Deep South. It seems that Time itself has worn out and fallen asleep here. Slowly, unhurriedly, burning dangerous passions flare up in this sleepy silence, and small, evil conflicts smolder. It seems that nothing is happening: the provincial South knows how to hide jealousy and hatred, perversely painful desires and the bitterness of ruined hopes, and the dull melancholy of crippled destinies for a long time behind the respectability of whitewashed facades and stained-glass windows illuminated by colorful neon. But one day someone, tired of remaining silent, begins to act - and then events roll like a deadly stone falling from a mountain...