Boy A

By Jonathan Trigell

WINNER OF THE WORLD BOOK DAY - BOOKS TO TALK ABOUT PRIZE 2008 WINNER OF THE JOHN LLEWELLYN RHYS PRIZE 2005 WINNER OF THE WAVERTON GOOD READ PRIZE 2005 ?A is for Apple. A bad apple.? Jack has spent most of his life in juvenile institutions, to be released with a new name, new job, new life. At 24, he is utterly innocent of the world, yet guilty of a monstrous childhood crime. To his new friends, he is a good guy with occasional flashes of unexpected violence. To his new girlfriend, he is strangely inexperienced and unreachable. To his case worker, he?s a victim of the system and of media-driven hysteria. And to himself, Jack is on permanent trial: can he really start from scratch, forget the past, become someone else? Is a new name enough? Can Jack ever truly connect with his new friends while hiding a monstrous secret? This searing and heartfelt novel is a devastating indictment of society?s inability to reconcile childhood innocence with reality.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Serpent's Tail
• Release date: Nov 3, 2011
• ISBN: 9781847654847

Jonathan Trigell

Jonathan Trigell was born in 1974 and has lived in Hertfordshire, Manchester, Derby and Stone. In 2002 he completed an MA in creative writing at Manchester University. He has been a TV extra, an outdoor pursuits instructor and a door to door salesman; plus has worked right across the winter sports industry, from mopping floors and washing dishes to journalism and organising major events. His first novel, Boy A, won the prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for best work by an author under 35, and also the Waverton Award, for best first novel of 2004. Jonathan now lives in Chamonix, where he is writing his third novel, Genesis.

Book preview

A is for Apple.

A Bad Apple.

He’s seen noses broken over less: the fag butts on the pavement have been carelessly tossed, five drags left in them.

Jack’s his name. He chose it himself. Few people choose their own names. He’s seen a lot try, adopting hard or suave AKAs, but those snide-nicks never stick. Jack picked his name from a book, The Big Book of Boys’ Names, a good place to start. Normal but cool, that’s why he likes it. Jack of all trades, Jack of hearts, Jack the lad, Jack in the box, car Jack, union Jack, bowling Jack, lumber Jack, steeple Jack, Cracker Jack. Always the childish pursues him: denied his own childhood, denier of another. Also Jack the Ripper, he didn’t spot that until later.

Beside him walks Terry. As they’ve walked together a thousand times, though always before in corridors; never in the splendour of this new unroofed world. Even with Terry there, Jack’s nervous. For all the promise of the sun and the baby-blue sky, he’s cold. Terry smiles at him and he can see the excitement there; he tries to look calm and happy. Maybe this is Terry’s moment, not his. Terry’s spent fifteen years working for this, waiting to see Jack striding down a sunny street.

Terry knew Jack when he wasn’t called that. Terry knows his birth name, the name he shed. Now lying like a sloughed snakeskin, in a file, in a cabinet, in a vinyl-tiled office in Solihull. Terry met Jack when he was called simply A, a letter for his name. Child A, a court name, to distinguish from a second child, B. Friend, accomplice, instigator, nemesis perhaps to Jack; now dead, no matter. Found hanged in cell, suicide presumed. ‘Good Riddance’, said the Sun, and a nation cheered. Jack felt nothing but a numbness when he heard the news. He alone now knew what had happened that day, and that even he knew less with each week that passed. But he also felt a fear that his cover was blown, and considered a spell with the fraggles, seeking sanctuary with the sick.

Jack’s feet feel light in the box-fresh, bright white trainers that Terry gave him to wear. They cushion and bounce him, lift him up. Terry says that his son wears them, that they’re the height of fashion. Jack’s seen the new lads coming in with them for a while now, but he’s still pleased with them. They’ve set the seal on his day. New and radiant and airy, that’s how it feels; there’s so much space around him. He could run in any direction in his new Nikes and nothing would stop him. He knows he could outrun Terry easily. Terry’s old enough to be his dad. He looks at him: the soft smoke curls in his grey sideburns, gentle eyes, brown like his Sierra. Jack used to wish he was his dad, used to think that none of it would have happened if he had been. He could never outrun Terry, because he’d stop when called. Jack could never let Terry down.

‘How’re you feeling, son?’ Terry asks. ‘What do you think of the wide world?’

‘I dunno.’ He always feels childish around Terry. A chance to let down barriers and bravado. ‘It’s big.’

He realizes ‘wide world’ is not just an expression. Streets are broad, houses high, horizons unimaginably vast, even corner shops are commodious. Big dens of pop and videos, fags and beer. The trees are greener close up, the walls are redder, the windows more see-through. He wants to tell Terry all of this, and more. He wants to tell him how great wheely bins are, how every house should have a name like the one back there did, how telephone wires drape like bunting. He wants to shake Terry’s hand with thanks and hug him with excitement and have Terry hold him tight to quell the fear.

But he only says: ‘It’s big.’

They pass a skip painted dazzling sunflower-yellow. Jack remembers skips as full of shit and bricks, but this one’s empty except for a cocoa armchair. He wonders if only Stonelee skips were full of shit; but the flies wafting above the chair must believe it’s on its way.

It was Terry who suggested they walk the last few terraced streets to Jack’s new home. Their driver is waiting outside, in a biro-blue Camry, with a stick-on taxi sign. The letters of its number plate spell ‘PAX’. Jack thinks this is a good omen, like they used to say when they were kids. Before ‘the incident’, as his assigned psychologist called it. Pax meant you made up, that the past was forgotten, a truce and amnesty declared, begin afresh.

The Camry is the third car that Jack and Terry have been in today, weaving a false trail, even though apparently unfollowed. The press knows that he’s being released; even the liberal papers called for a working committee. The Sun said ‘Tell The Public Where He’s Going And Let Them Sort Him Out’. Terry says they’re just being sensationalist, that most people believe he’s served his time. Terry reminds him that they haven’t got a photo taken since puberty. That he’s a special case, not going on the offenders’ register, untraceable. Even Jack didn’t know where he was going until an hour ago.

‘It’s a city,’ is all Terry would let on. ‘Plenty of new faces around, specially with all the students, no one’ll notice you, and no one’d think to look anyway.’

Terry explained there may have been better situations than this one, more controlled environments for Jack to move into. But they went for anonymity, and for speed. If Jack had stayed in prison while extended plans and preparations went on, there might have been a change of heart, a change of Home Secretary. He could easily have ended up inside for another ten years.

The car is outside tan-bricked number 10. Two suitcases in its boot contain a manufactured life. The life belonging to Jack Burridge. Jack Burridge has just finished the last of several short stints for taking and driving away. His Uncle Terry has found him a room and a job. Jack Burridge has no connection to the fuss in the papers. Jack Burridge feels like a caterpillar, about to embark upon a second life, a phase he didn’t know, didn’t even dare hope, existed.

The driver is a policeman, special protection squad. He’s a professional; if he’s disgusted his thoughts don’t show. He nods granite-faced to Terry, who leads Jack up to the door with a broad-leafed hand on his back. Jack feels like his legs will collapse but for the strength pouring into him from those fingers. Terry is his parole contact, his only true friend, and now his uncle. He might just as well be God. Once, as a boy, though he can’t now remember it, Jack thought that he might be. Terry’s hand is the hand of redemption certainly, the hand that reached out to save a drowning child, the hand that raps three times on a door that’s painted a garish granny-smith green.

‘Hiya,’ says Terry with artificial exuberance to the woman that opens the door. ‘This is my nephew, Jack. Jack, this is Mrs Whalley.’ He pronounces it like ‘Wall’.

She says, ‘Kelly,’ as she shakes Jack’s hand, her own a little too slim for her fullish form. Legacy perhaps of a slighter youth. Not that she’s old, somewhere in a make-up blur of thirties, two to five. Her eyes, blue themselves, are shadowed in a brighter tone, so that the blue inside them looks like green. They flick unconsciously to Jack’s crotch as she asks them in.

‘You must excuse the mess,’ she says, though none is in evidence. ‘I’m working nights this week, I’ve only just got up, really.’

The lounge they sit in is small but seemly: pink walls, pine polished floor, framed pictures of parents and holidays; and a large print of a famously obscure couple kissing in Paris.

‘Cup of tea, Jack?’ Kelly asks.

He looks hesitant.

‘Lovely,’ Terry answers for them both.

Kelly gets busy in an interconnected kitchen while Jack and Terry get the cases from the car. The policeman-taxi drives away. Two more are watching from the windows of a guesthouse over the road. Terry will also stay there tonight. Just in case. Though Jack has a panic button, state of the art, disguised as a pager, that goes straight through to Terry at any time. Cuts to the protection squad if Terry doesn’t take it. He should never be out of reach of safety.

Kelly knows none of this, only that she has a new lodger. She probably thinks he looks young for the twenty-two she’s been told, though really he is two years older. His skin is doughish pale, and she’d be right if she thinks there’s a kind of awe and innocence in the way he looks around him.

She moves her uniform from the back of the sofa to let Terry sit down. It is a sensible nurse navy, not the short curvy white worn by strippers and schoolboy fantasies.

‘Thank you,’ says Jack, as he takes the tea from her. Not a trace of the broad accent of his youth remains. Long years spent trying to fit in at Brentwood then Feltham have removed every taint. He sounds more rough South East than anything. Jack Burridge comes from Luton.

The tea is too sweet, which makes it extravagant somehow, and Jack savours it.

‘Which hospital do you work at?’ asks Terry.

Kelly’s reply vaguely washes over Jack’s ears, but he watches her face: round, kind, wilful, helpful.

Then she asks him a question, something about the weather or the journey. It takes a moment for the words to achieve significance in a mind still reeling in new sensation. Sensing his stumbling, she redirects it to Terry.

A cat slides easily through the kitchen flap, and saunters into the room, while the three of them are still engaged in this two-way conversation. It’s a slate-grey tabby which, with narrowed eyes, selects Jack for its favours: rubbing against his leg, before settling on his lap to cajole a tickle. Its bones feel frail like chicken, but the fur is warm and soft, and it purrs pleasure.

‘There, I knew you were all right, Jack,’ his new landlady winks. ‘He’s a good judge of character, is Marble. Aren’t you, Marble?’

She gets up to give the cat’s back a quick tousle, and Jack can smell her hair. Vigorous, green-meadowed Alberto Balsam adverts.

‘Marble, this is Jack. He’s our new lodger.’

She addresses the cat as if it’s a child, not a baby, but one that starts to be a companion.

The small-talk continues, though it’s not small for Jack. Terry nods a smile with anything that Jack utters. He chose Manchester, he found the house and Kelly; and against any and all the doubters, he is sure that this boy, his boy, will make good. The fact that Mrs Whalley, whom he likes, so clearly likes Jack, confirms to him that he is right to like them both.

Even Terry can need reminding that it’s OK to like Jack.

Kelly shows them around her home with enjoyable pride. She gives operating instructions on the washing machine and dishwasher, and the other white wonders of the kitchen. Jack is impressed with his room. Terry had deliberately talked it down so he would be. It’s a box-room, small, with a low sloping roof, but recently decorated. The wardrobe and desk share a flat-pack freshness that the allan-key on the window sill confirms. Clean newness seems to reverberate. The exception is a slightly battered portable telly, which sits on the desk’s corner, so that it’s watchable from in bed.

‘It’ll not get ITV for some reason, Jack,’ Kelly says, ‘but there’s nothing but rot on that channel anyway. Try not to have it on too loud if I’m on nights. House rules here are just common sense and courtesy. I can see that you’ve plenty of both, so I’m sure there’ll not be any bother.’

After another cup of tea Kelly confides that she has promised to eat with a friend before they both start work. The daylight has already dimmed through the lace curtains. She comes back down the stairs wearing her uniform, and with it an equally functional black cardigan. She offers to let Terry stay the night, and when he refuses, begs a promise to come back soon. She shouts final friendly commands as she leaves the doorway.

‘I’ve left a key in the pot on the kitchen table, but it’s the spare I usually leave with the neighbour, so I’ll have to get one cut as soon as I can. I’ll not be back till the morning, so make yourselves at home. There’s plenty of videos if there’s nothing on the box, and any amount of fast food places at the end of the road. You’ll have seen them as you came. But if you just want a sandwich or something then help yourself to the fridge. There’s not much in there, I’m afraid. Anyway, I’ll see you tomorrow, Jack. Bye Terry, see you soon.’

And the door slams to a still house.

‘She can’t half talk, heh?’

‘She’s nice, Terry. Thank you.’

‘Ah, c’mon.’ Terry must have noticed the tear in Jack’s eye.

But it’s quickly blinked away. Terry probably wishes he hadn’t seen it, hadn’t said anything. Though it doesn’t matter and he’s seen far worse.

Later they kick back in the spiced-fat comfort of a doner kebab. Chilli sauce burning into cans of apple Tango, almost too slippery to hold. Jack has never had a kebab, which one of his cellmates professed to miss more than his family. The Styrofoam box reminds him of something. He stares at it, pooled juices already congealing into waxy solid. It is McDonalds, only they used to come in these boxes. McDonalds was the stuff of childhood treats, another good omen. Jack is a great believer in omens. The mundanity of prison focuses the mind, tuning recognition of pattern and difference. A black grain in puffed rice at breakfast can mean a bad day, seven matchsticks left a good one. Primitive societies set great store by these things. Prison is primitive.

Together they study the Sunday night football round-up. Terry tests on players and form. Jack Burridge supports Luton Town of course: ‘Luton Airport who are you?’, ‘The Hatters, the Hatters and we’re all fucking nutters’. The odds of finding a fellow fan up here are remote, but he must demonstrate a knowledge of his team. Actually Jack has never had any real interest in football, but he can talk a good game. He’s shared a cell with a Celtic Casual, a Chelsea Headhunter and a middle-aged Notts County trainspotter called Trevor who was doing five months for getting his thirteen-year-old girlfriend pregnant.

When Terry leaves, Jack prowls the house, tentatively opening drawers and doors. He feels the weight of the pans, and touches the contents of the fridge, reading sauce bottles like books. He takes the dry blast of the airing cupboard on his face. The deep hall rug between bare toes, with its well-worn trough connecting the lounge and the front door. Eventually, when he has sniffed and stroked his way to some intimacy with this dark and strange new house, he curls foetal beneath the duvet in his small box-room. And despite the unfamiliarity of everything around him, Jack feels safe, because he knows he is the apple of his uncle’s eye.

It is under Terry’s careful gaze that the events of the next two weeks will unfold. An orientation time for Jack. An opportunity to adjust before he starts his job. A fortnight only, to try and lose the bewilderment with which he looks at this world.

They will visit parks, restaurants, pubs, an art museum, an airport. Jack will open a bank account, fills in forms, make his name more real with each one. He is going to stand in a crowd at a Saturday morning market, shaking with fear at first, immobile while strangers’ faces file around him. They will walk on a moor, where the silence is absolute, no noise but the sound of their own feet brushing the bracken. They will ride there in Terry’s car, which Jack has only ever watched from afar. Has never before felt the vinyl seats under his fingertips. Heard the radio on its one working speaker. They are going to laugh when, in town one day, a rottweiler bangs its face against a van window, desperate to get at a cat. They will buy the Big Issue, from a guy who says he was ready to give up until Terry came along. And Jack will say that he knows how this feels.

Each day for fifteen, Terry is going to pick Jack up at 7:30 am, the time he will soon be picked up for work, and show him another alien angle on life. And every night Jack is going to close his eyes and not believe this is happening to him.

Every hour, whether with Terry or alone, he will practise his story. Learn his legend. Focus on the things he needs to do to make himself a little less a fish on the riverbank, a little more the man a different boy might have become.

B is for Boy.

A Boy named B.

Child B was exactly the kind of boy that your mother told you not to play with. Probably his mother would have too, had she been there. Had she given a fuck. He had shoulder-length hair that fell naturally into tight scouse curls, and even at nine a faint bum-fluff moustache on his upper lip. He looked like a juvenile, scanky, Bobby Ball. But he was too thick to be funny. Stupid not through lack of native wit but from a determined resolution to remain ignorant. Ignorance was his armour. He walked with a swagger, advertising a readiness to fight that was ridiculous for his size. Legs spread wide, feet splayed outwards, fists balled. A strut adopted from his older brother. A brother known around town as a man not to be messed with. Who none the less messed with B.

He was a loner, child B. Not like some, because of natural inclination. He was a loner because he carried an aura, something beyond even his walk and his constant spitting. Something that kept other children at bay like wolfsbane or garlic might ward off monsters. Children can be monsters too. We know that now. But once children were just children.

Child A, before he even knew B, knew more than most what poisons might be concealed inside angelic frames. Of course he was to see, in glorious Technicolor, the depths to which a child could fall. But he’d already had inklings. He had experienced first-hand some of the cruel possibilities. Growing up in a run-down mining town, where the pits were everywhere.

Once A had walked home with one shoe. Ripped junior Y-fronts stuffed into the pocket of the trousers that he’d managed to rescue. His other shoe was still thickly lodged in a tree; impervious to sticks and stones and names and all the other things that A felt so deeply. He trudged with a sock sodden from the pavement, and a lopsided swaying like the plastic boy on the Barnados boxes would walk, his legs imprisoned in torturous iron callipers.

It was long dark when he made it home, shivering from the tear-cloaking drizzle. Aching from rabbit punches and dead legs and hours of futile efforts to rescue his shoe. His mother hugged him before she started shouting.

‘We’ve been worried near enough to death. Where the bloody hell have you been?’

He’d rehearsed the story in his mind. He couldn’t tell them the truth. Some bitter shame locked it in him. He knew with cockeyed childish intuition that they wouldn’t understand, couldn’t comprehend the depths of his anguish. He firmly believed that his tormentors would increase his suffering if he went to adults. Maybe they would have.

‘I was playing football with my friends,’ the word made him wince. ‘The ball got caught in a tree and we all threw our shoes to get it down. But mine got stuck, and that’s where I’ve been, trying to get it down.’

His mother stroked his hair, and this kindness was almost more than his body could take. His lip began to waver, but he caught his father’s eye and managed to check it.

‘Come on,’ his dad said. ‘Let’s go and get the bloody thing before it really starts pissing it down.’ He broke off to get his keys. But in that instant of eye contact, when he had been about to cry, A had seen his father’s disgust.

They both sat in silence with their shame, as they drove to the field by A’s school. Water pooled with the cement dust in the back of the battered pick-up, a ladder looming over the windscreen. A felt like a condemned witch when he climbed it, a broom in hand, and a big hangman’s bough above him. The rungs were treacherous, slippery even in his dry trainers. Lightning flashed like a cheap horror gimmick. And A knew, what his father forgot or ignored, that up a wet ladder under a tall sycamore was a harmful place. A route that belonged to the storm. His dad held the ladder steady, as if in a half-hearted suicide pact. And A worried, more even than death, that his father would see the ripped pants still bulging in his trouser pocket.

It went on for months like this. Years, in child time. A small boy being bullied by a group of such diversity and size that he seemed to have no moments of freedom. No respite save at home, where he tried desperately to hide his engrossing unhappiness. He lay awake much of most nights, plagued with anxiety. Sometimes he fell asleep in class.

His teacher, Mrs Johnston, née Grey, disillusioned and going through divorce, thought him lazy like his left eye. She noticed that he always seemed to be dirty, and looked like he’d been fighting. Other children told on him, even some of her nicest girls. There could be no smoke without fire. Besides, he had the same startling blue irises as her filthy, philandering fuck of a husband. Though she neglected to mention this last

Reviews for Boy A

[fluffyblue_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I have wanted to read this book for a long time. It was well written; there was nothing in the writing that made me feel uncomfortable or irritated. The story was interesting and had echoes of the story of two boys in the UK who abducted and killed a young child. I really felt for the main character - I wanted him to succeed in his new life. He had appeared to have moved on and that prison had done its job. It has provoked my thinking in relation to how I would feel about being close to an individual who had committed a really terrible crime in their youth but had since 'done their time' and become an adult.

[arubabookwoman · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Boy A participated in the commission of a heinous crime at the age of 9. Fifteen years later, he is released from custody, given a new identity, Jack Burridge, and sets about to build a life for himself.He gets a job, makes friends, and gets a girlfriend. He keeps reassuring himself that he is 'normal,' but the tabloids, knowing only that he has been released, but not his identity or location, scream that the public deserves to know where he is.The book raises interesting issues about crimes committed by children and about the role the media plays in crime and punishment. It is a very quick read.

[jkdavies · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

thoughtful and wistful...

Spoiler alert... I am not sure how much of the narrative is carried by the insinuations of innocence of Boy A in the story, how much you want to believe everything will work out for him as the story describes Boy B's character. I just finished Scaredy Cat by Marc Billingham which had a similar childhood folie a deux at it's heart; and the discovery that Boy A was guilty after all was not a real surprise, as I felt that he would not have seemed so repentant a character if he had not been guilty.
Despite the subject matter, an enjoyable read.

[filmbuff1994 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Harrowing. Heartbreaking. Fabulously discussion-worthy. All these are apt ways to describe Jonathan Trigell’s lightning bolt to the nervous system, ‘Boy A.’ It would be pretty accurate to say I loved this book, and even when I hated it, I loved it, because I realized when it was making me edgy and mad it was actually making me think. You don’t have to agree with it’s political viewpoint, but you will have to allow your beliefs and preconceptions to be challenged for the sake of the experience.Jack is not an orphan, but he might as well be. After years locked away for a ghastly childhood crime, Jack has been reintroduced to society under a different identity, hiding from the media and potential acts of vigilantism. Jack’s Liberal social worker, Terry, believes he is essentially good. But can Jack really start his life over? Can he fall in love? Does he deserve to be given a second chance, considering what he did to another life?Throughout the book Jack is portrayed to be a bit childlike and naïve, without coming off a saccharine or eye-rollingly idiotic. His romance with Michelle, a more experienced young woman, is touching and real. Finally a love interest with more reason for being than simply saving a troubled young man from himself. Michelle is not a manic pixie dream girl. She reminds me of the character from “Silver Linings Playbook” (the movie.) She’s made up of parts- strength, shrewdness, vulnerability. And she likes all those bits, even the dirty ones.‘Boy A’, above all, a meditation on growing up, the possibility and unpredictability of change, and the horrors of living under the scrutinizing eye of the media. The writing is incisive and laden with layers of meaning. The ending is bleak, but also leaves us to contemplate how such a pay-off could’ve been avoided.The only thing I really didn’t like about this book is the snide judgment with which the author portrays Angela, the victim of Jack’s adolescent crime. Angela is ten, but the author seems to treat her as responsible beyond her years, while the blame is displaced from Jack and his unnamed, delinquent friend. Once a bitch, always a bitch, the novel seems to say, which really didn’t sit well with me. I think less time could be spent on portraying Angela as a spoiled princess that ‘bad things just didn’t happen to’ and more time showing the grief of her family at such a senseless crime should have been incorporated. While focusing almost entirely on Jack’s pain is novel, it also seems kind of inappropriate considering the subject matter.Although I found that aspect of ‘Boy A’ somewhat reprehensible, the rest of the book was so beautifully written and psychologically complex that I cannot help writing a glowing review. The shifting perspectives (though fully grounded in third-person) give a darker, deeper look into the events that make up the book’s chapters. I also highly recommend the film adaptation with Andrew Garfield. Garfield gives a beautifully realized portrayal of Jack, and the most important aspects of the book are retained in the film version. Happy reading!

[presto_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jack at twenty four years old has just been released from prison, he is in the company of Terry, his long assigned care officer, ahead he has a new life invented for him; only the name Jack did he choose for himself. But can he make a success of it? He has grown up in juvenile institutions having committee as a child, along with an accomplice, an horrendous crime. All seems to go well, he has work, makes good friends, even a girlfriend who loves him; yet he finds it a struggle to live as this invented person, and of course there are those, including the tabloid press, who cannot forget what happened in the past.By introducing us to Jack as a young man before we know the extent of his crime, it is easy to accept him without judgement, and he comes across as a friendly, slightly naïve, but very likeable young guy. As we learn more about his unhappy upbringing, for we jump back and forth in time chapter by chapter, we are even more endeared to him. Having so endeared Jack to us, what subsequently transpires is all the more involving, for our heart goes out to the youngster and especially when everything appears to be falling apart for him.The other characters are well drawn and very believable, including Terry, his devoted carer, his fun loving friends and workmates, and his attractive and slightly voluptuous girlfriend.Jonathan Trigell writes eminently readable prose which captures just the right intimate mood. It is a thought provoking, cleverly yet subtly constructed story, with a touch of irony, and great humanity. Boy A is heart rending tale that could as easily be fact as fiction, and all the more moving for that.

[smithsj01_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed reading ‘Boy A’ as much as I enjoyed watching the film adaptation for television a number of years ago. It isn’t a lengthy novel so it is never going to go into a massive amount of detail. There are reviews that I’ve read where people would like to see the book being about Boy B and I can see why as there would surely have been more meaty prose to write (a possible idea for a second novel?), however the information the author gives us about Boy A’s involvement makes it more worthwhile for me. At the critical point he could have stopped but he didn’t and whilst the crime isn’t made explicit – well obviously it resulted in murder but the bit before the murder – the reader is left to wonder over sexual assault or even rape. Although during the recount aspect of the novel, Boy A continually states he wasn’t involved it is left up to the reader to come to their own judgement. It is certainly an easy book to read in terms of length and style and I loved the alphabetical chapter headings, fitted in well with the idea of Boy A and Boy B. Even though it is fiction there is the obvious impact real life events had on the ideas for the novel and for me this book gives you an insight into the thoughts about what goes on behind the scenes and how a new life is created for criminals who have served their sentence but need protection (and should they actually be given it but that is outside of the realms of a book review!). I found the relationship between Terry and Jack very interesting but wonder how much the boundaries between this professional relationship would come across in real life; he really did love Jack more than his own son. A lot is crammed into such a small number of pages and it would have been interesting to see what would have happened if his identity hadn’t been worked out until much later on when he may have had a family – the implications there are so different to what Jack as the age he is in the novel faced. I also loved the ambiguity about who actually called the press. The reader is left to wonder so much.

[chrystal_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Depressing and riveting. The truth will always find you.

[emhromp2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Oh man what a good book!!! I won this book, almost by accident, and had no idea what I was getting myself into. While reading, I asked myself many questions: Do I want Jack to be guilty? Would that make the story easier to grasp?Do I blame Boy B? How do I feel about him?Do I want Jack to tell his secret to Michelle?Is Terry right about focussing his attention on Jack, rather than on his son?Is the book trying to find an excuse for Jack's past? And so on.Honestly, the book is very confusing and it puts a lot of standard values in a different light.Again, I loved it.

[sanddancer_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Two boys kill another child and become national hate figures. This is the story of one of those boys after he has been released with a new identity. It is a difficult subject but nonetheless an interesting one. The narrative is split between Jack in his new life, the perspectives of other people (his social worker, his girlfriend, his father etc) and flashes back to the crime. No easy answers are offered here or excuses made for Jack, but I would say that at times Jack as he is in the present is prsented as too good to be true and the author seemed to be trying too hard to get our sympathy for him, which marred the book somewhat.

[cbjames_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Boy A, the award-winning debut novel by Jonathan Trigell, is loosely based on a real murder case. A very young boy was led away from a shopping mall by two ten year olds who then murdered him. The two boys, first identified as Child A, and Child B, were tried for murder in adult court and sentenced to 8 years. Their case became an international sensation. I remember seeing the CCTV footage of the two boys leading James Bulger away on the evening news here in California. The sentence sparked outrage and was lengthened to 15 years by the British government before the European courts reduced it to the original 8 years. Boy Child A and Child B were released in 2001 and currently live under new identities on life licences, which means they can be returned to custody if at any time the British police determine they are a treat to public safety.Jonathan Trigell uses the basic outline of the case in his novel Boy A to address the question of what to do with extremely violent children, but Boy A should not be viewed as a fictional telling of the case. Mr. Trigell said in an interview that he was intrigued by the idea of a young man in his twenties who is completely innocent of how the world works, and that this idea was the genisus for his novel. Boy A alternates between the present day, following what happens to the surviving boy, and flashbacks that deal with other points of view: Boy A's father, Boy B, Boy A's psychiatrist, among others. This makes it possible to give the reader a very sympathetic portrait of the young killer; we see how hard it is for him to face life outside of the institutions he's spent so much time in as well as how difficult his life both before and during the years he spent incarcerated was. This aspect of Boy A is fascinating reading. Mr. Trigell gives us an in-depth case study of Boy A that makes it clear how he ended up committing a murder at such a young age and forces us to examine what we believe should be done with such children. While he has done a horrific thing, Boy A is a child and remains one throughout the book.Boy A begins to break down toward the end. There are too many plot contrivances and a finish that is essentially a grand car chase sequence, and the final ending, a cross between Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The 400 Blows is a bit of a cop-out in my view. After 200 pages of intriguing psychological profile and character study, that was hard to put down although not much really happened, I thought it a shame that the last 50 pages relied on so many "exciting" plot developments. The true story, though mostly rumor, is much more interesting.While not without its weaknesses, Boy A by Jonathan Trigell is an excellent read. The characters are well drawn and each add to the discussion of how Boy A ended up in prison and of what to do with such children once they are grown. It's a story that will stay with you after you've finished the book, that's for sure. I'm giving Boy A by Jonathan Trigell four out of five stars.

[uffer_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I confess, I failed to finish this book. It's not badly written - in fact, there is a hallucinatory clarity in places, with - in some cases, rather unpleasant - images sort of swimming up in front of you whether you really want them or not. It's very visual, very acutely observed, but just didn't work for me, possibly in part because there are things in here that make me feel obscurely guilty for having had a 'normal' childhood.Those are the things, of course, that lead into a degree of sympathy with protaganist Jack, despite being fairly sure you are going to see him do something horrible, both in the interspersed flashbacks and the ongoing 'now'. And that, together with the inescapably visual nature of the book, is why I just can't continue reading. If the bit with the eel can make me gag, I don't want to know how this is going to pan out at either end of the timeline.Sorry, Jack - you're on your own.

[leftontheshelf-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a great book, although quite painful reading so I'm not sure I can say that I enjoyed it, but I'm glad I read it.

[olippold-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Boy A", the first novel by author Jonathon Trigell tells the story of Jack, a young man recently released for prison for a murder he committed as a child with another boy ("Boy B"). The story is clearly based on the Jamie Bulger case where two young boys murdered a three year-old toddler. As in the factual case, Boy A is given a new identity, "Jack" and a job. He struggles to live an adult life but manages to make friends, find a girlfriend, and even become something of a local hero after saving someone's life. However, the threat of his real identity being revealed constantly hangs over him. The story is divided into 26 fairly short chapters (one for each letter of the alphabet) which include Jack's current life, flashbacks to the past and to the murder, as well as some chapters dealing with other characters, such as Terry, his social worker, the other boy involved, and his girlfriend Michelle.Jack is clearly meant to be a sympathetic character, so the book raises important questions about whether he should be entitled to a normal life after serving his prison sentence. The book shows factors in his life that led to his predicament, though it does shy away somewhat from going into too much detail about the murder, and seems to place most of the blame on Boy B. I think if Jack was made more culpable, it would challenge the reader more by making it harder to feel sympathy for him. The book is well written, with some clever usage of language, such as phrases like "seamless sameness", though this doesn't always work - for example it took me a few seconds to realise "ladvert" was not a typo.Overall, these are minor criticisms, and I enjoyed the book. Despite the grimness of the subject, I felt there was something quite optimistic about the story, probably due to the humanity of many of the characters.

[captbunzo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Boy A by Jonathan Trigell is a compelling story of the journey that a child might take when leaving prison in the body of an adult man.The main character of this book has been convicted as a child of committing a horrible crime. As the story weaves back and forth between the past and present, we learn more and more details of the life of this Boy. We walk with him as he experiences so many childhood firsts in the shoes of an adult. The story is quite griping and fascinated me pretty much from cover to cover.The greatest challenge I found with this novel was the manner in which it forced me to explore the concept of feeling compassion toward someone who has participated in a truly horrific act. In society we demonize (perhaps rightly so) those who have committed crimes. We put them into a comfortable box which we only open when we surf the news or watch a movie or television drama. Boy A pushes this issue right to the forefront of the readers attention and really enables one to walk in the many shoes of a young, confused ex-con.Mr. Trigells writing style is both comfortable and a pleasure to read. He expresses concepts in such manners that are quite easy to understand on many levels, simple and complex. The book really flew by in absolutely no time at all (which was almost a disappointment).The author chose an interesting style for naming chapters, using a letter of the alphabet to begin each. To a certain extent I found this a bit trite and silly. However, as the book captured my attention more and more, I eventually actually found myself looking forward to the name of the coming chapters. So perhaps the technique was a good one after all. Perhaps, in one hand, this enabled the reader to count the passage of the book in such a manner as an inmate might abstractly experience the passing of time behind bars.SPOILER WARNING - STOP READING NOW...SKIP TO THE END... You have been warned.... *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***Unfortunately, as the book nears the conclusion, the author felt the need to tear apart the world that he had so carefully created for the rest of the story. I really do not understand what happened to the happy ending. I know that happy endings are not always realistic, but the are so lovely to read! I (for one) really enjoy when a book can just end nicely with the characters (at least the good guys) can all walk away in happy bliss, or something at least close thereof.I do understand the need to express the brutal reality of how rough the world can be for those trying to rebuild a life. However, I simply would have preferred to see the main character allowed to continue in his happy life.SPOILERS ENDED... *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***So, in conclusion... I really loved this story. As I commented above, Boy A caused me to challenge my view of the world and entertained me much at the same time. Well done, Mr. Trigell!

[jkavanagh-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Boy A is a very challenging book, dealing with one hell of a delicate subject. Boy A is a child murderer just released from institutional care and prison where he has been since his involvement (with another boy) in the murder of a beautiful young girl when he was 10 years old. The second boy hanged himself or was lynched whilst in prison. The book constantly reminded me of the Bulger murder as the story is so similar,except in this case the victim was a young female. The book is splendidly written with a bleak,dark atmosphere of forboding from start to finish. The author captures the hopelessness not only of Jack's (Boy A) situation as he tries to settle into a new life and reinvent himself, but also paints a dreary picture of the society and circumstances in which he was brought up, giving the impression that these senseless murders are just waiting to happen,and that the boy is almost as much a victim as the girl he helped to murder. The author is also scathing in his attitude to the gutter press,and their campaigns for mob revenge on the two boys, for example the hanging of boy B in prison was greeted in The Sun with the headline "Good Riddance". I think the author does a magnificent job of getting across the point that when something as horrific as the murder of a child occurs,society needs to see an angel in the victim and a monster in the perpetrator,there can be no room for a grey area,because that would mean that we would all have to look closely at our own shortcomings and ask ourselves how these situations can be allowed to develop in the first place.The author captures this mood nicely by reversing the adage "Only the good die young" to "Only the young die good". Trigell's fine first novel challenges the black and white thinking which most of us adopt to help us cope with such unpleasent situations, and poses challenges for parents, health care systems, education systems;specifically bullying in schools, and policing systems. Boy A is a harrowing book and will not be to everyone's taste. I thought it was an excellent read, dealing with a very difficult subject,and the writing is superb

[lizplummer · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is not the sort of book I would normally read. I found it slow to get into at first, but from about halfway through it started to grip me, although I never really got into it enough that I cared what happened to Jack in the end or got inside his head.It opens with the release from prison of a child murderer, Boy A, and his attempts to rebuild his life under a new persona. The different chapters randomly flash back to the past or continue in the present, not only from Boy A's point of view but also from various other people in the story. There is a strong sense of forboding, of the inevitability of the outcome all through the book. It is sometimes a bit difficult to decipher whose story is being told from one chapter to another. It made me consider the point of view of the prisoner - the "criminal" labelled by the tabloids as totally evil and without redeeming features - the way everything is black and white rather than shades of grey. The way the victim is always portrayed as whiter than white and the criminal as evil incarnate. The author does a good job of debunking this.I felt that the author was more comfortable describing the 70s/80s when Boy A was growing up - the sordid bullying, closed doors, don't talk about it sort of atmosphere of Boy A's childhood, and the prison scenes, than the awkward narrative of the first day in the digs and the descriptions of his new life in the present. The latter seemed much more stilted, shallow - but maybe that was deliberate, to emphasise Jack's unfamiliarity with this new world. To emphasise the superficiality of much of the present maybe, its MacDonalds and Nikes....

[ablueidol · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Boy A by Jonathan Trigell was first published in 2004 but reissued this year as being filmed for Channel 4. Despite its title, it is not of the “I had an awful childhood but survived so that you could feel good” genre. It’s a fictional account of Jack (Boy A) and the events that lead up to and from his release from prison on license. He was a child murder of a child…or was he? Think of the 10 year old child murders of James Bulger in 1993 and the consequences should one of them try and rehabilitate back into society as adults. The crime paid for…but can the murder of an innocent ever be paid for? Is revenge more important then justice or forgiveness?This is not a fractional account of what if, rather it explores the notion of what is evil and that love need actions for it to be love. However, it does this not by heavy moralizing and cut out figures that act as pegs for this or that idea. But is a post modernist novel in that we jump into other characters heads, and go up and down time over 26 chapters that follow the alphabet. But fear not, you don’t have to rush back to your Agatha Christie as this creates a sense of foreboding and suspense.During the course of the story we get inside Jack’s head as he struggles to understand the world he has not seen since he was 10, and adjust to having a best friend (Chris) and even a girlfriend (Mitchell). But all the time his secret holds him back so he can never be truthful, never real with them. He is helped by his probationary officer (Terry), who genuinely cares for him and stands by him but at the expense of his own son’s welfare with tragic consequences. In and out of this story we also find out what Boy A and Boy B did and the if’s and what’s of Boy A’s deeds. We also see the consequences of parents not caring for their child and the indifferences of schools to bullying. But also us , the general public, and our responses to cases like this and the newspaper campaigns we support that forget the child and man as we become a lynch mob.I found it a genuine page turner from the first few sentences that grips you with an urgency of trying to discover who and what the betrayal will be. Its short sentences, switches in time and character move the story along so that in the end you have to try and deicide if it’s a battle of Evil versus Good. Or is it the battle that each of us face in tying to relate to others in love? So would I recommend it? Well if you want cloying sentimentality, or a morality of black and white this is not the book for you. But if you want one that explores moral ambiguity and what love if not explored honesty leads to, then this is the book for you.

[tcarter_77 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Boy A is a haunting read, provoking the reader to engage with ambiguous issues and to examine their own reactions to the shades of grey of our society that are often rendered in the media in black and white.The narrative focuses on the release of a man who may, or may not, have been guilty of a child abduction and murder when himself a child. In interleaving flashbacks the tangled threads of the histories of various of the characters are traced through to their consequences for the present. As is to be expected of a book dealing with this subject matter, the book does contain some graphic violence and sexual languageTrigell obviously loves language and uses it richly and imaginatively, even poetically. At times the fascination with tricks of language does get in the way, being a bit too clever, intruding into the narrative. This is especially incongruous when they occur in dialogue. This is an engaging, thought provoking read. However, ultimately I found it to be just a little too predictable and not substantial enough to be completely satisfying.

[sandpiper_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I approached this book with some trepidation - the synopsis being the story of a man who, as a child, committed a "monstrous crime", and is now about to be released with a new false identity, aged 24. I thought it sounded like a depressing story, and I would not really not be able to empathise with the main character. I was very wrong. The book's narrative grips from the first page, where Jack, newly released, marvels at "this new unroofed world". You are immediately told the basics of his case - jailed as a barely-prosecutable child, vilified by the tabloid press - but the young man we meet seems startled by the world, guided by the youth worker, and father-figure, Terry, who has been his only true friend throughout his imprisonment.The story jumps between two different times - one thread starts at the moment of Jack's release, the other starts during his childhood. As both threads progress, we get to know both the man and the boy, and we start to wonder what went wrong? His current day story carries on in a linear fashion, but the story of his childhood and imprisonment jumps backwards and forwards. The author keeps the suspense running, and by the time we get close to what the boy is supposed to have committed, we know the man well enough to question his guilt. I read the Serpent's Tail edition of this book, and there were a couple of annoying typographical errors which jarred me out of the story in which I was engrossed. It might sound petty, but when you see something wrong, it leaps out at you and distracts you. (For reference, the two errors are "Mr Ben" instead of "Mr Benn" (the children's television programme), and "a long barrelled Cannon" rather than Canon, regarding a camera lens.)But overall, a very engrossing read. I would recommend it to anyone.

[flissp_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm adding an extra couple of paragraphs retrospectively, because I read something that pointed out that a review should really describe a book rather than be opinion. Well, actually, when I read a review, I like a bit of opinion, if it's someone I trust (and, in fact, the reverse), it gives me an idea of whether or not I'll like the book, as the blurb on the back of a book is inevitably inaccurate. That said, this person had a point, so:Boy A is the story of a boy convicted of committing a horrifying crime with a friend when a child and who consequently has lived most of his life in young offenders prison. It begins with his release back into the community, now a young man renamed Jack, and deals with his re-integration. We watch him trying to start again and adjust back into normal life, whilst having to hide his true identity from his new friends, girlfriend and aquaintances. We watch the conflicts this induces, whether it is possible to live normally with such a huge secret in your past. At the same time, we get glimpses back into his early life, leading up to his imprisonment and what actually happened and why.Well, I started out finding the rather over-dramatic writing style irritating (I realise this was probably to emphasise the grittiness of the story, but it didn't work for me), however, it didn't take me very long to get over that. This is a gripping book and a very easy read - I read it the day I received it. I would say though that while I found the way the topic is explored interesting, the story sad and the people and their reactions (_mostly_) very believable, I never really found I believed the story and how it pans out itself. The true tragedy never really came across to me.An interesting book, which was very readable, but not life-changing.________________________________________________Another retrospective as I have just seen a rerun of the C4 adaptation of this book, which was, in my opinion (several months after reading the book), very good and, after all, time makes all the difference to first impressions.So, retrospectively, the book obviously made much more of an impression than I gave it credit for - the story was still very fresh in my mind and still upset me just as much as it did last time - leaving me just as undecided as to where my sympathies lay as when I read it.I still stick with my original rating (above average, but not special) - principally because the writing style _did_irritate me, as did some of the plot contrivances, but I would recommend it not just as a 'good read' but as thought provoking too. Above all, this story is about the truth and how honesty is not, but maybe should be, the best policy - make your own mind up!