In a certain kind of English novel, the hero (male, always) is shaped by his public school education. Prep schools barely feature in fiction outside Boy’s Own–type tales of boisterous camaraderie, despite the fact that the years between the ages of eight and thirteen are more formative and bizarre than the dully hormonal teenage years. Michael Amherst’s debut novel, The Boyhood of Cain, a vivid reconstruction of a child’s developing mind, presents a rare exception to the rule. 

It follows the experiences of Danny, the headmaster’s son, at an unnamed prep school, where he struggles to become himself when faced with strictures that cannot accommodate such a questing and odd child. Danny wants to be recognised as special and ‘can think of nothing more humiliating than failing to be the hero of one’s own story’. When his father loses his job and becomes a farmer, Danny is invited along to Mr Miller’s extra art classes. He feels seen – until his friend Philip is invited to join the group and Danny is lambasted for liking Constable’s Hay Wain and for sharing his parents’ ‘bourgeois, provincial tastes’.

The novel is narrated in a slippery third-person voice; names, places and temporal markings are generally avoided. Mostly, this works, but there are occasional slips. In places, Amherst’s voice intrudes (a dead cat’s flesh is like ‘plaster of Paris’) and proper nouns (Apple Macintosh, Jacques Villeneuve, the Labour Party) disturb