Review by Booklist Review
Daniel's father is the respected headmaster of a prep school. Ironically though, 12-year-old Daniel doesn't want to go to school. A "sickly child," he is often permitted by his doting mother to stay home, even though his sickliness makes Daniel feel like "the namby-pamby, Mummy's boys in books." Worse, his own mother claims him to a degree that is humiliating. Daniel's life changes dramatically when his father takes an early retirement and moves the family to the countryside. Though Daniel says, "I don't want friends," he nevertheless makes one in Philip, a new golden boy in school. Soon, Daniel feels Philip is the boy he himself is meant to be. Daniel excels at school, particularly at English. "What he is interested in are words. . . These are what matter." Debut novelist Amherst's words matter as they limn Daniel's life in beautifully realized, psychologically acute, and nearly granular detail. Daniel is often ambivalent, although he prays to be made "normal" and to be loved. Will readers love him? Will he be the hero of his own story? It may be enough to say that he is an unfailingly fascinating, memorable character. A reader can't ask for anything more.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The debut novel from Amherst (after the memoir Go the Way Your Blood Beats) is a muted coming-of-age tale set in 1990s England. Daniel's father leaves his job as headmaster of the local preparatory school, where Daniel is enrolled, due to health issues. His parents sells their house and move to the country, a rupture that feels to Daniel "like a death." Awkward and slight, he struggles at school without the safety net of his father being in a position of power. He befriends Philip, a new student, and tries to win the approval of Mr. Miller, the school's English and art master. Daniel's mother suffers bouts of depression and his father drinks to excess. Meanwhile, their son challenges the local vicar when discussing Jesus ("If you are God then there shouldn't be poor always," he contends) and butts heads with Mr. Miller while analyzing John Constable's painting The Hay Wain ("Reality and truth are not the same thing," Mr. Miller argues). Amherst writes with a measured pace and careful attention to his youthful protagonist's malleability as Daniel questions his sexuality and other supposed binaries of life. The result is an authentic depiction of youthful fears and confusions. Agent: John Ash, CAA. (Feb.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An English boy engages with sex, art, and religion without the guidance of his failing parents. Daniel's father is the headmaster of a choir school, a plum position in a small English town and one that will soon evaporate. An illness and financial mismanagement force him into an early retirement and a half-life of ill-advised farming. Daniel's mother, meanwhile, slumps into a depression that eventually becomes suicidal. In the midst remains the boy (as Amherst calls him), trying to matter-of-factly interpret the adult world. He's impressed by psychotherapy, which he learns about on TV ("People are just like books--full of hidden meanings that need to be unearthed by an attentive reader") and becomes indignant that the Anglican Church says he'll have to become confirmed before receiving communion, so he refuses to do it ("Is this not exactly what Jesus would have done, he asks his parents? His mother does not welcome the comparison"). Daniel's joys are drawn from Philip, a boy as smart as him but with more charisma and a stable family, and from Mr. Miller, a "young and exciting" art teacher who tutors the two boys in painting while their classmates play. Mr. Miller's hipness is thrilling--he prefers Fauvism to John Constable--but it becomes sinister when he discusses "sex appeal" with a class of preadolescents. The novel's plain style is contemporary, though Amherst is comfortable with figurative language: A vicar has a "face like a spoon," the gap between two posh houses is "like a held breath before one makes a choice." But when Amherst embraces ambiguity, in the moments where Daniel must admit no answer is to be found, the novel contains the same eerie spark that makes the bildungsromans of Hermann Hesse crackle. A coming-of-adolescence novel that rigorously avoids cliche. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
