Madeleine Dunnigan’s debut novel takes place in the summer of 1976 at Compton Manor, an eccentric remedial school in Sussex. Jean is in his final weeks there and finds various forms of escape: meditation, psychoanalysis, communism, psychoactive substances, sex. This story of a shy outsider in a hierarchical school ‘ecosystem’ seems to cover well-worn territory at first. But as Jean progresses, Dunnigan manages to surprise us.

The book’s central relationship is between Jean, ostracised for being German, poor, Jewish, gay, secretive and prone to violence, and Tom, rich scion of a chicken-farming empire and confident star of the football team. Their romance develops during a languorous summer sprinkled with rituals designed to usher the boys into