In the Making

by G.F. Green

'In The Making' recounts the early adolescent experiences of a boy called Randal Thane, and evokes with astonishing empathy the pleasures, pains and perplexities of first love. At prep school, Randal falls under the spell of a charismatic older boy called Felton.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Coming Of Age, British Literature, 20th Century, Gay

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

George Frederick Green, 1911-1977

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 5 out of 5]

boy falls for older boy while at boarding school. is it a crush, true love, or the relationship that will come to define him? was he "in the making" and then, at the end, finally made, set, his trajectory predetermined? the idea is a dark one.

the imagery is intense; the prose is like honey. very easy to get lost in all of the beautiful sentences, the good kind of lost. a Faulkner kind of lost, with a Jamesian style. the characterization of this boy is so deep and rich, the story must include autobiographical elements.

the first chapter, exploring his world as an often solitary child lost in his thoughts and imagination, finding symbolic meaning in the world around him, was so beautifully written, sensual in its details, and resonant to me on a personal level. later chapters as he finds himself adapting - surprisingly successfully - to his new world outside of his home, at boarding school, were equally resonant. I really saw a lot of myself in this kid. the longest and most important chapter recounts a Halloween party and the moments when the two boys are at their closest. this is one of the most incredibly written sequences I've ever read in any book. layers of meaning meets layers of imagery meets layers of deep characterization. *swoon*

the last few chapters portray the coming apart of their relationship, the boy's fall from grace with the school, his defiance, and then his disinterest in engaging with anything at his school, now that he recognizes this part of his life is over. and yet the last chapter as he leaves this school makes clear his life is far from over. given the time in which this book was written, I really appreciated the assumption that his life will go on, very much changed, but it will still go on, and the boy will continue living in this strange world.

he is no longer in the making, no longer a formless thing reacting to the world, an inchoate shape. he has been made, he has become fully formed: the "patterns of his life were achieved." this is the last sentence; it is a tragedy but also a reality. many of our adult selves were made in our childhood. my wish for this child is that he could move beyond those patterns. but it does not appear as if G.F. Green thought that could be possible.

the psychologist Kazimierz Dąbrowski wrote of "positive disintegration" which is a theory about personality development. it is a potential "third stage" that comes for some, after nature and nurture. a person who strives to understand themselves and the world around them can embrace a temporary form of personality disintegration, where they let go of what they know and what they think they know. if they are truly capable of redevelopment - mainly due to possessing a characteristic that Dąbrowski calls "overexcitability" - then they are open to new inputs, new ideas, new ways of thinking and being. and so a person can remake themselves, they can develop a conscience and an outlook that does not stay chained to nature or nurture. the boy of In the Making experiences this disintegration. it made for the most compelling moments in this book and is why this was a uniquely affecting experience for me.

unfortunately for the boy, his positive disintegration is not a temporary thing. which according to Dąbrowski, is what is key to the development of an open, curious, flexible personality. the disintegration must be temporary and it must be not lead to fixity. the boy's emotionally overexcitable persona indeed disintegrates during this period of openness, but he does not come back from it; all that is left behind is a yearning but essentially loveless pattern that will now be repeated. rather than a new understanding of how life need not be a fixed line. this was instructive and also deeply sad. as are all such fixed states.

the introduction is by Peter Parker. it is a brief but still excellent overview of the author's immaculate prose style, his troubled life, and the writing of this book. it does not explore his suicide in 1977, at the age of 66. it is clear to me, from what I know of his life, that George Frederick Green did not escape the patterns that controlled his own trajectory.

[Alwynne · Rating 4 out of 5]

An intense, lyrical, semi-autobiographical depiction of first love between two boarding-school boys in the years directly following WW1. First published in 1952, G. F. Green’s book follows Randal Thane from age seven to fourteen. Randal’s a daydreamer, a deeply sensitive boy whose head’s filled with images from storybooks and fairy tales, often overwhelmed by feelings he can’t fully understand or define. Not long after his eighth birthday, Randal’s sent away to school. Once there he rapidly develops a fascination for another boy, the beautiful, popular Felton. Someone who seems to represent everything Randal’s ever longed for. As he forms a tentative bond with Felton, Randal slowly begins to understand who he is and what he desires.

Green’s narrative is highly impressionistic, full of striking images of light and dark that seem to echo Randal’s experiences as a child struggling to emerge from underneath the shadow of the Great War. There’s an underlying mysticism and melancholy here that reminded me of work by writers like John Cowper Powys, although at times Green's prose also has a slightly Proustian flavour – particularly in the later scenes - and there's even a hint of Denton Welch who was one of Green's favourite writers.

Green is particularly adept at conveying Randal’s inner world and his immediate responses to his surroundings, as he’s caught up in a swirling cascade of sensations and emotions. At the same time the adults in Green’s novel are depicted as almost otherworldly, hovering in the background - aloof or manipulative, sometimes unfathomably harsh. There are some memorably beautiful images but these are interspersed with moments of unexpected horror suggesting how quickly a person’s existence might shift from positive to negative. But as this unfolds Green introduces an element of cautious optimism as Randal not only comes to realise but embrace his queerness – in keeping with Green’s intention to use his character's experiences to demonstrate being gay was entirely normal, a way of countering those who regarded it as an abomination.

In his prime Green’s work was championed by a variety of prominent authors including Elizabeth Bowen, Christopher Isherwood and E. M. Forster but he seems to have fallen into relative obscurity. I could only find very brief outlines of his life or publications, and barely any reviews of his fiction. I suppose this may be because of his comparatively small body of published work. Green was called up during WW2 but after army commanders discovered he was queer he was court-martialled and imprisoned for “homosexual offences.” An event that seems to have had a long-lasting impact on his mental health, which may explain the long periods of silence between his publications. This is by no means a flawless piece, it can swing between overwrought and slightly stiff, it can also be oddly elliptical. There’s very little plot, and the narrative requires a level of surrender to the central character’s perspective which won’t work for some readers. But I was completely immersed from start to finish.

[Troy Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is very rare for me to read a book and discover that none of my GR friends have read it before me. In this case it isn’t too surprising as In The Making is a somewhat forgotten novel, only recently brought back into print after its original publication in 1952. For a short work of only 144 pages, it is quite an intense read and one that I found I needed to read slowly. The author, G. F. Green, spent years working on this novel and this can be felt through the dense intricate prose, which in places is exquisite and reminded me of the writings of Hermann Hesse. The story is essentially the thoughts and feelings of the central character, Randal Thane, who ages from eight to fourteen over the course of the novel. Whilst at boarding school Randal develops feelings for an older boy, Felton, and a friendship, of sorts, develops. His feelings, which Randal himself struggles to understand and control, slowly begin to develop from affection into obsession. Well done Penguin for bringing this interesting little novel back to life.

[Jo · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have to admit, I'd finished this book before Xmas, but due to other commitments, and it being unmemorable, I'd actually forgotten I'd read it all. This was a book that was difficult to love, but managed to hold my interest in parts.

The story is about a British schoolboy and his falling in love with an older boy. I felt there were elements of gothic and some beautifully crafted scenes, but overall I felt the writing ruined the potential for this to be better, deeming it pretty lifeless, with a lack of substance.

[ALEARDO ZANGHELLINI · Rating 4 out of 5]

I felt somewhat conflicted while reading this.

It's the story of a boy who is sent to an elite school, where he develops a crush for an older boy. It has some light gothic elements and decadent imagery which somehow give it an old-fashioned feel, with distant echoes of The Lost Estate, Forrest Reid, and even the Brontes' work.

The initial part sets the scene, introducing Randall as the kind of imaginative, deep-feeling, introspective lad to whom the sort of experiences that later happen in the book might indeed happen. Yet, considering the short overall length of the story, this initial part is a little long-drawn. The central part is, I think, the most inspired -- good and at times wonderful. The rest of the book made me fear more than once that this might be, after all, an ill-begotten tale of despair and madness induced by same-sex desire, doomed to result in suicide. Indeed, there are several junctures towards the end where you can just see it all heading for tragedy -- a jump out of the window, a sleeping pill overdose, a train ending it all a la Anna Karenina... it could take so little! Happily, none of the above materialises, earning the book 4 stars.

The book's main faults are a penchant for indirect, obscure, vague language and imagery to describe Randall's (generally troubled) states of mind, and a writing style that often fails to flow between poorly placed commas, enthusiastically scattered relative clauses, and unnecessary qualifiers.

The good bits really are good, though.

[DanSk · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is quite a beautiful story - from friezes to new friezes, it speaks to first loves: outrages, unspeakable feelings, and bitter hindsight. It took me to my Feltons - and how, decades on, I still love them and wish them every happiness.

I loved the narrative, but found the prose beautiful but sometimes challenging . There was lots of reading and re-reading passages.

[Derek Collett · Rating 2 out of 5]

I chose to read this because Green was an undergraduate friend of Michael Redgrave, a biography of whom I enjoyed reading a couple of years ago.

Frankly, I found this book exceptionally tiresome. It's a school story about a boy with a crush on an older boy. This type of subject matter has been done to death; if it hadn't when the book was written then it certainly has in the years since it came out. Compare for example Nigel Balchin's The Fall of the Sparrow, which deals with similar subject matter in its early chapters but in a vastly more entertaining and interesting manner. Green never succeeds in bringing the school routine to life, although I admit that he probably wasn't trying to, and one ends up with precious little 'sense of place'.

The preface of this edition lauds Green's prose as 'fine writing'; if that really is so then I want no more to do with 'fine writing'! Personally, I just don't see it. I found what I thought were numerous mistakes, ambiguities, bouts of stylistic awkwardness/obtuseness and grammatical infelicities in the book; the writing is truly tortuous at times and one frequently has to stop and ponder the meaning of individual sentences, which surely wouldn't be the case if the writing was as fine as it is cracked up to be. Also, Green was clearly desperately in need of an editor.

There are some good moments in this novel, to be fair, but they are swamped by the style and the overpowering reek of adolescent homosexual sexual desire (unconsummated, naturally). In fact, this is I fear a book aimed squarely at gay ex-boarding school pupils and no-one else. Alas, it wasn't for me at all.

In the pantheon of literary 'Greens', the pecking order currently reads as follows:
1. Graham Greene
2. Henry Green
3. F.L. Green
x. G.F. Green

[Dickon Edwards · Rating 2 out of 5]

Newly republished by Penguin Modern Classics, this is held up by some critics as a 'lost gay classic'. It's a short novel from the early 50s about a British schoolboy's love for an older boy. I found this hard going, despite its short length (150 pages), because the style felt overcooked, lifeless and inert and lacked the wit of, say, Waugh or Firbank. However, there are still some scenes of dreamlike sensuality which remain in the mind, such as the one where the younger boy commands the older into biting into an apple at a Halloween ball.

[Wilde Sky · Rating 3 out of 5]

A young boy's years at school and his crush on an older boy are described in this book.

Some of the writing was good, but I found the story a bit too bizarre / dull.

Rough word count 50,000, reading time around 3 hours.

[figaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Passionate... beautiful... indulgent... dreamy.... influential... possessive... intense. Such beautiful prose, so intent on emotion, that you, too, feel the intensity of randals fixation; that you, too, can feel possessed and entranced by felton; that you, too, feel inexplicably changed.... the foreshadowing of fate, the background of a more major story, the making of a life pattern.. maybe, even, the first dive into madness

[Mariam Odent · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was a slog at times. I think it's because it's full of impressions and descriptions that it takes a lot longer to process. At times a bit dream-like, it evokes the imagination of a child who organizes their life according to little narratives that have their own internal logic that is a bit divorced from the adult world. So you really get into the head of this little isolated kid who has a crush on an older boy. It's not quite clear if the older boy, Felton, ever returns his affections but that doesn't seem to matter in the end. What matters is the journey the boy takes from admiring the boy, idolizing him, slowly realizing his sexual attraction, the rejection and eventually accepting his feelings for the boy.

It's not exactly a page-turner and it's unlikely I'll pick up the book again since it was so slow. But I appreciated the cumulative effect of the small impressions and scenes and there are some lovely passages in the book.

[Sam Schulman · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I find that a writer I've never heard of called "one of the unheralded masters of 20th Century English fiction" I become enraged, because I feel I have heard of all the unheard-of prose masters. So imagine my fury when more than a decade after the 20th century has been dead and buried to find somebody in TLS saying this of G.F. Green, OF WHOM I HAD NEVER HEARD. I rushed to my own rescue, grabbed this volume at the library, and herewith make full disclosure when I say, "really, he isn't."
but his school novel, of which this volume offers too little really to judge, is supposed to be his masterpiece, the stories of gay men in thee services during the war are beautifully written, but without any charm beyond the workmanship.