English Monsters

It s 1986, and the worldly, confident Max Denyer is ten years old when his expatriate parents send him back to England to board at the school on the hill , an isolated institution staffed by misfits all of them eccentric, some of them violent. Fortified by the care and counsel of his beloved grandfather, who lives painfully close by, Max must reinvent himself to navigate the school s arbitrary rules and savage customs.

By his early twenties, Max has entered a period of drifting that will continue well into adulthood, and his years at the school have become a well-polished chapter of the story he tells about himself. But when he falls back in with old classmates, he discovers that his memories of the place are not the only version of their shared past. In the years that follow, Max s life and those of his friends will become ever more entwined as they face the evolving consequences of their experience.

Here is a story about bonds between men and boys, both nurturing and devastatingly harmful. Here too is a chronicle of what happens when care is outsourced in the name of building resilience and character. English Monsters is a timely and important novel that marks the spectacular return of Booker-longlisted author James Scudamore.


Genre: Literary Fiction