English Monsters
JAMES SCUDAMORE
(JONATHAN CAPE, 368 PP, £16.99)
Tablet bookshop price £15.29 • Tel 020 7799 4064

Male friendship is a road less ­travelled by contemporary novelists, but it’s one that deeply concerns James Scudamore and the narrator of his moving fourth novel. Ten-year-old Max is ­catapulted out of an easy life with his farming grandparents and sent to a boarding prep school known only as “the place on the hill”. From his first evening, arriving in deep snow with the plumbing not working, to getting beaten for something he didn’t do, Max is outraged by the injustice of it all. His only solace is that he’s not the only one whose daily life “is characterised by violence”. All the boys are victims in different ways: weird Simon, pathetic Neil, even straight-up head boy Ali. Only Luke seems unafraid and ready to make a 999 call on the forbidden phone, or put a sealed envelope of sweetcorn in the briefcase of terrifying “Weapons” Davis, the sergeant major of the school. When Max takes to crying at night, someone finally takes notice: kind, jokey “Crimble” the English master who takes Max out of Agincourt Dormitory and talks to him.