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Quarry
Todd, Randy, and Carter come across a boy while roaming the countryside near their town. They take him hostage in a cave in an abandoned quarry and consider what to do next.
In Lord of the Flies , William Golding needed a plane crash and a desert island to bring out the capacity for violence and evil in his English schoolboys. Jane White, a mother and housewife living in Godalming when she wrote Quarry , needed only a chance encounter in fields not unlike those around her own development.
Quarry is deeply unsettling. White’s teenaged kidnappers ride bikes, worry about exams, have to be home in time for supper. Yet they also imprison and torture another boy with the cold calculating objectivity that Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.”
Written in cool, realistic prose, Quarry pulls the reader into a vortex of violence and inhumanity. It’s a gripping and believable account of a crime and a parable filled with complex symbolism.
In Lord of the Flies , William Golding needed a plane crash and a desert island to bring out the capacity for violence and evil in his English schoolboys. Jane White, a mother and housewife living in Godalming when she wrote Quarry , needed only a chance encounter in fields not unlike those around her own development.
Quarry is deeply unsettling. White’s teenaged kidnappers ride bikes, worry about exams, have to be home in time for supper. Yet they also imprison and torture another boy with the cold calculating objectivity that Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil.”
Written in cool, realistic prose, Quarry pulls the reader into a vortex of violence and inhumanity. It’s a gripping and believable account of a crime and a parable filled with complex symbolism.
302 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1967
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
October 25, 2022
This is a forgotten British novel of the 1960s about three boys, two aged 17 and the other 15, who persuade a 12 year old boy to follow them to a cave in a quarry close to where they live, and tell him to stay there.
It’s a strange, disturbing and fascinating piece of literature.
The boy isn’t kidnapped, he is free to leave if he chooses, but he is in awe of the older boys, and does as they say.
The three older boys, Randy, Todd and Carter, are very much children of the 60s, their parents not really bothered that they are rarely at home, or what they do with their time. Communication between them is minimal. The adults are apathetic, the boys are bored. Though not quite sure what they will do with the younger boy, they see him as an experimental plaything.
‘The boy’, as he is known throughout the piece, has no name, and is vague whenever asked where he is from, and where his parents are.
After the boy goes wandering one day, but returns to the cave, the older trio build a cover and in effect imprison him, though this is done with mutual agreement.
Randy and Todd are approaching their final exams, soon they will join the status of adulthood. Their parents suggest various activities for the holiday, but that is met with indifference; they seem much happier playing childish games of pirates at the quarry.
But the intense atmosphere is building, and it is clear the current situation can’t last. We know it won’t end well. Rather than the boy, it is a young girl who is their first victim. She has been spying on them, and after a chase, she is run down by a motorbike.
The boy’s demise soon follows, in a remorseless scene, but there is little follow up, no grief, no guilt, no investigation, it is as if he never really existed.
It isn’t surprising that this novel shocked readers on its publication, it was compared to Lord of The Flies. Though the impact is less now, it still is a fascinating work.
Rather than it concerning the breakdown of society, I saw it more as dystopian, in that society has already broken down, and White delivers a warning as to what may lie ahead. The adults have intentionally indistinct voices. They are characters on the periphery, simply going through the motions of their dull lives, without direction or stimulation, and with little or no concern for their children.
It’s a strange, disturbing and fascinating piece of literature.
The boy isn’t kidnapped, he is free to leave if he chooses, but he is in awe of the older boys, and does as they say.
The three older boys, Randy, Todd and Carter, are very much children of the 60s, their parents not really bothered that they are rarely at home, or what they do with their time. Communication between them is minimal. The adults are apathetic, the boys are bored. Though not quite sure what they will do with the younger boy, they see him as an experimental plaything.
‘The boy’, as he is known throughout the piece, has no name, and is vague whenever asked where he is from, and where his parents are.
After the boy goes wandering one day, but returns to the cave, the older trio build a cover and in effect imprison him, though this is done with mutual agreement.
Randy and Todd are approaching their final exams, soon they will join the status of adulthood. Their parents suggest various activities for the holiday, but that is met with indifference; they seem much happier playing childish games of pirates at the quarry.
But the intense atmosphere is building, and it is clear the current situation can’t last. We know it won’t end well. Rather than the boy, it is a young girl who is their first victim. She has been spying on them, and after a chase, she is run down by a motorbike.
The boy’s demise soon follows, in a remorseless scene, but there is little follow up, no grief, no guilt, no investigation, it is as if he never really existed.
It isn’t surprising that this novel shocked readers on its publication, it was compared to Lord of The Flies. Though the impact is less now, it still is a fascinating work.
Rather than it concerning the breakdown of society, I saw it more as dystopian, in that society has already broken down, and White delivers a warning as to what may lie ahead. The adults have intentionally indistinct voices. They are characters on the periphery, simply going through the motions of their dull lives, without direction or stimulation, and with little or no concern for their children.
October 28, 2024
Say what you will about the problems of social media today, but without it I would never have read this book nor been infused with its ideas and language. Written over a decade after The Lord of the Flies (1954), and shortly after A Clockwork Orange (1963), to understand Quarry one must consider what was happening in England at that time. Avoiding a long digression and history lesson, I will only say a few things about this book, starting with the plot: A close-knit gang of three teenagers, living in suburban England, find themselves in the middle of an exceptionally hot and dry period in southeastern England. About to leave grammar school, the two eldest are sensing the end of childhood and dealing with the fear, and the rage, of a future that is frighteningly unknown (this is when the world thought nuclear holocaust was imminent, and the old ways of English colonialism were in their death gasp). They have a plan, though this is not revealed till the end, and the tension White builds drives the story at a breakneck speed (younger it would be me under the bedsheets with a flashlight). The “plan” is made manifest by the action, where they find a mysterious young lad wandering near the Quarry and they cajole him into a secret cave they have discovered, a hideout that would not be discoverable in the craggy, overgrown wall of the long-abandoned quarry. This book is plot- and character-rich, and is enriched by philosophical ideas and human psychology – a first, yet heavy, novel from White.
White excels in character description, where we get to know the boy’s minds in fine detail, the fear masquerading as bravado, the frank nastiness of a boy’s sexual desires and a full platter of Oedipal mother/son and homoerotic encounters. It impressed me that a seemingly proper, prim Englishwoman could get so deep into the adolescent male disposition. The hypersexual Randy, for example, explodes like the punks in A Clockwork Orange (portending the late 1970s/80s), in frustration at his (pending) lot in life simultaneously while rejecting his lord and savior in the Roman Catholic Church. The golden boy, of means, is Todd who is preyed upon by his mother in unsubtle sexual advances. The youngest, Carter, is the lesser, but his lower social standing provides “ballast” to the trio.
The lad is not held against his will, in fact he seems complicit, yet they all pretend in the fantasy for inexplicable reasons. The boys visit their prisoner separately, and they come to realize the lad has a wisdom and knowledge far surpassing their own. An elaborate drama is unfolding, and this device makes the novel work so well. The “innocent” lad becomes the sacrificial lamb, and willingly. Jesus-like, the lad seems otherworldly, unwilling to say a word about why he was wandering, where he lives, his name, or anything else that is repeatedly asked. His physical body is described through the eyes of Todd, clearly homoerotic, yet also strangely pure.
The bleakness of a postmodern world seems to trouble the action-oriented Randy the most, yet Todd is the leader and Carter the dumb muscle of the gang. The story ends fantastically, where reality is fuzzed by unreal observations, as the murder is consummated, and the cave incinerated and crumbles to a fiery obscurity. I found the lack of realism a bit disappointing at first, but as allegory it creates a delicious ambiguity which sticks with me and keeps me pondering what it means. This is perhaps the hallmark of a great novel. I’m so thankful for having this book recommended.
One downside, and this is the publisher’s fault (Boiler House Press), was the extremely low quality of the printing itself. In many places sentences were interrupted (when typing there is a term for this, I can’t recall it) to the next line, in other places words were missing and overall punctuation and formatting errors abound. This book had several orders of magnitude more mistakes than usual – it’s almost as if there were no editorial review at all. I’d like to buy an original cover, but I won’t. My copy, though flawed, does include a nice Intro and interesting Afterward. It is a shame the publication quality is so poor in the modern paperback easily available today.
White excels in character description, where we get to know the boy’s minds in fine detail, the fear masquerading as bravado, the frank nastiness of a boy’s sexual desires and a full platter of Oedipal mother/son and homoerotic encounters. It impressed me that a seemingly proper, prim Englishwoman could get so deep into the adolescent male disposition. The hypersexual Randy, for example, explodes like the punks in A Clockwork Orange (portending the late 1970s/80s), in frustration at his (pending) lot in life simultaneously while rejecting his lord and savior in the Roman Catholic Church. The golden boy, of means, is Todd who is preyed upon by his mother in unsubtle sexual advances. The youngest, Carter, is the lesser, but his lower social standing provides “ballast” to the trio.
The lad is not held against his will, in fact he seems complicit, yet they all pretend in the fantasy for inexplicable reasons. The boys visit their prisoner separately, and they come to realize the lad has a wisdom and knowledge far surpassing their own. An elaborate drama is unfolding, and this device makes the novel work so well. The “innocent” lad becomes the sacrificial lamb, and willingly. Jesus-like, the lad seems otherworldly, unwilling to say a word about why he was wandering, where he lives, his name, or anything else that is repeatedly asked. His physical body is described through the eyes of Todd, clearly homoerotic, yet also strangely pure.
The bleakness of a postmodern world seems to trouble the action-oriented Randy the most, yet Todd is the leader and Carter the dumb muscle of the gang. The story ends fantastically, where reality is fuzzed by unreal observations, as the murder is consummated, and the cave incinerated and crumbles to a fiery obscurity. I found the lack of realism a bit disappointing at first, but as allegory it creates a delicious ambiguity which sticks with me and keeps me pondering what it means. This is perhaps the hallmark of a great novel. I’m so thankful for having this book recommended.
One downside, and this is the publisher’s fault (Boiler House Press), was the extremely low quality of the printing itself. In many places sentences were interrupted (when typing there is a term for this, I can’t recall it) to the next line, in other places words were missing and overall punctuation and formatting errors abound. This book had several orders of magnitude more mistakes than usual – it’s almost as if there were no editorial review at all. I’d like to buy an original cover, but I won’t. My copy, though flawed, does include a nice Intro and interesting Afterward. It is a shame the publication quality is so poor in the modern paperback easily available today.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 2, 2024
This is a fascinating read, and I am delighted that the book has been ‘rediscovered’ and republished by Boiler House Press after many years of obscurity. It is great when books are re-discovered and this opens up a whole trail of new books. I have been able to find three more of Jane White’s books and after reading Quarry, look forward to absorbing these as well.
I found Quarry unsettling on a number of levels. It is a book in which an innocent boy is murdered, for no clear reason, by three older boys. It is unsettling because it is not clear why this happens, but also because the boy has every chance to escape but chooses not to. There is never a clear motive for the murder. Also, there are elements to the relationship between Todd and his mother which I also found very uncomfortable. They felt unhealthily close, more like adults and closer to lovers, not like mother and son. Looking at the novel on different levels, this is also a coming of age story where the two older boys are about to enter adulthood and move on in their lives “leaving childish things behind”. There is a religious element which must parallel the seemingly innocent boy who puts up no resistance to his fate with Jesus. As further parallel with Jesus, the young boy is ‘imprisoned’ in a cave, which is where he will die and be buried.
This was Jane White’s first published novel. She was in her early thirties when it was published, living, the press would have us believe, a genteel life as a housewife in Godalming in Surrey. One of the early reviews of the book actually stated “Surrey Housewife writes Unhousewifely Novel”. I rather like that quote because I have never regarded Jane White as anything as simple as a housewife. She won a scholarship to Cambridge and studied English literature. That lifts her achievements above many housewives. She then went on to write and publish seven novels in the space of eight years. I was interested to see that one of the reviews of Quarry, published in the Sunday Times was by Kay Dick who judged the novel to be “impeccably self-assured” but also “too contrived”. Kay Dick would go on to write They in 1977, ten years after Quarry. They are not a million miles apart, both equally unsettling. They is also a ‘rediscovered’ novel – republished as part of the excellent Faber Editions series.
There are three villains in the book. Boys that attend a small town Grammar School. For those who might have no idea how the old British education system used to work, let me try to plug some gaps.
Grammar Schools were originally named for the fact they taught Latin. Some are very old institutions – the one I went to was founded in 1495. That’s right, I attended its 500th anniversary celebrations. Most small towns would have a Grammar school which tended to be the oldest school around. By the time we get to the 1960s and 70s, they would take the best of the pupils from all the secondary schools around the town (pupils over 11) – the best academics and sometimes the best sportsmen or women. Entry was by an examination, called the 11-plus exam. In the 1960s, around the time this book was being written, Grammar schools were disappearing, being amalgamated with comprehensive schools. Some survived and I believe there are around 160 of them left today, mostly as independent schools which charge fees. More exclusive today than they were back in the 1960s.
Two of our main characters, Todd and Randy, are senior boys at the Grammar School. They are in their final year, taking the exams (Advanced or ‘A’ Levels) that will determine if they win a place at a university. The younger of the three is Carter, described as having “just enough brain to get into the Grammar School” and being only 15, two years younger than the others. The age of 17 or 18 was the point at which you left school and went to university for the next three or four years. These three boys have formed an odd friendship. Todd is described as ‘brilliant, handsome, arrogant.” Randy is seen as having a quick mind, but also being painstaking and methodical. The teachers described him as having “a lack of spontaneity, a watchfulness, an eye continually open for the main chance, which made him generally disliked and distrusted by the staff.” The combination of the three was seen as formidable – physical energy (Carter), intellectual brilliance (Todd), and low cunning (Randy). Todd was the leader.
The subject of sex is frequently in the story. How could it not be with three teenage males as the protagonists. For Randy, obviously with that as a knickname, the obsession of having sex for the first time is clear. Not only does he pursue girls, but is also haunted by the religious guilt because he is a Catholic. White would not doubt have drawn upon her own Catholic upbringing to see this side of the story:
There were two unsettling elements of sexuality regarding Todd. The first was his relationship with his mother, which at times, felt too close and on the verge of sexual. And then there was his relationship with the boy, the unnamed victim. At times that seemed to hint at something homosexual. An unacknowledged desire lurking beneath the surface:
And remember the date of the novel, 1967. That was the year in which male homosexuality was decriminalised for the first time in the UK. But only for men over the age of 21. It would have been in the news at the time.
There are two other elements that I want to explore – one is about violence and one is about the behaviour of the victim. The Afterword added to the Boiler House edition of the book is written by Jane White’s daughter in law, although the two never met. Helen Hughes is a senior lecturer in the school of Literature and Languages at the University of Surrey and has access to lots of unpublished material that Jane White left behind. This gives us some wonderful insights. One of these involves William Golding’s The Lod of the Flies which Quarry was compared to at the time it was published. White had included a discussion between Todd, Randy and their school master in which they talk about Golding’s book, which they are obviously studying at school. This was removed from the published version of the book at the recommendation of White’s publisher. He thought that it took something away from the novel, while my own sense is that it would have added an interesting extra layer. The boys were studying Golding’s book, it was on their minds at the time they were also indulging in a similar descent in savagery and loss of civilisation. I like the parallel and also like that we still have the passage that White wrote, in which the boys argue that Golding’s book was about violence.
The last element is about the unnamed victim and his behaviour. He lives in the cave in the quarry, depending on his captors to bring him food and keep him alive, while at the same time inching closer to his death. Why does he not escape and why is no-one looking for him? There is also a Christ like innocence and serenity to his behaviour, which at times make him feel much older than he really is. All these elements are at play throughout but emerge more strongly at the end when the boy is alone having a conversation with Todd.
Even at the end of the story, when the three older boys conduct a mock trial on their ‘prisoner’ he still remains calm and innocent. Again there is that Christ-like innocence and calm in the face of a fate he already knows.
One last parallel about the timing of the book would be with the gruesome case of the Moors Murders in Britain between 1963 and 1965, when a couple kidnapped and killed five children in an apparently motiveless attempt to commit the perfect crime. Their trial was in 1966, and was again in the news in 1987 when further graves were discovered. Some of the bodies have never been found. Both killers spent the rest of their lives in prison. People at the time were appalled by the lack of a motive. Again something else that was playing out at the time the book was being written.
I found Quarry unsettling on a number of levels. It is a book in which an innocent boy is murdered, for no clear reason, by three older boys. It is unsettling because it is not clear why this happens, but also because the boy has every chance to escape but chooses not to. There is never a clear motive for the murder. Also, there are elements to the relationship between Todd and his mother which I also found very uncomfortable. They felt unhealthily close, more like adults and closer to lovers, not like mother and son. Looking at the novel on different levels, this is also a coming of age story where the two older boys are about to enter adulthood and move on in their lives “leaving childish things behind”. There is a religious element which must parallel the seemingly innocent boy who puts up no resistance to his fate with Jesus. As further parallel with Jesus, the young boy is ‘imprisoned’ in a cave, which is where he will die and be buried.
This was Jane White’s first published novel. She was in her early thirties when it was published, living, the press would have us believe, a genteel life as a housewife in Godalming in Surrey. One of the early reviews of the book actually stated “Surrey Housewife writes Unhousewifely Novel”. I rather like that quote because I have never regarded Jane White as anything as simple as a housewife. She won a scholarship to Cambridge and studied English literature. That lifts her achievements above many housewives. She then went on to write and publish seven novels in the space of eight years. I was interested to see that one of the reviews of Quarry, published in the Sunday Times was by Kay Dick who judged the novel to be “impeccably self-assured” but also “too contrived”. Kay Dick would go on to write They in 1977, ten years after Quarry. They are not a million miles apart, both equally unsettling. They is also a ‘rediscovered’ novel – republished as part of the excellent Faber Editions series.
There are three villains in the book. Boys that attend a small town Grammar School. For those who might have no idea how the old British education system used to work, let me try to plug some gaps.
Grammar Schools were originally named for the fact they taught Latin. Some are very old institutions – the one I went to was founded in 1495. That’s right, I attended its 500th anniversary celebrations. Most small towns would have a Grammar school which tended to be the oldest school around. By the time we get to the 1960s and 70s, they would take the best of the pupils from all the secondary schools around the town (pupils over 11) – the best academics and sometimes the best sportsmen or women. Entry was by an examination, called the 11-plus exam. In the 1960s, around the time this book was being written, Grammar schools were disappearing, being amalgamated with comprehensive schools. Some survived and I believe there are around 160 of them left today, mostly as independent schools which charge fees. More exclusive today than they were back in the 1960s.
Two of our main characters, Todd and Randy, are senior boys at the Grammar School. They are in their final year, taking the exams (Advanced or ‘A’ Levels) that will determine if they win a place at a university. The younger of the three is Carter, described as having “just enough brain to get into the Grammar School” and being only 15, two years younger than the others. The age of 17 or 18 was the point at which you left school and went to university for the next three or four years. These three boys have formed an odd friendship. Todd is described as ‘brilliant, handsome, arrogant.” Randy is seen as having a quick mind, but also being painstaking and methodical. The teachers described him as having “a lack of spontaneity, a watchfulness, an eye continually open for the main chance, which made him generally disliked and distrusted by the staff.” The combination of the three was seen as formidable – physical energy (Carter), intellectual brilliance (Todd), and low cunning (Randy). Todd was the leader.
The subject of sex is frequently in the story. How could it not be with three teenage males as the protagonists. For Randy, obviously with that as a knickname, the obsession of having sex for the first time is clear. Not only does he pursue girls, but is also haunted by the religious guilt because he is a Catholic. White would not doubt have drawn upon her own Catholic upbringing to see this side of the story:
He had rolled with Daphne in the warm grass, and although the encounter had come to nothing he had wanted, and still wanted, to commit fornication with her, or with some other girl. He was in mortal sin, and if he should die now he would go to Hell. He felt as if he was walking a precarious tightrope. It was as if he were condemned to carry a load of dynamite which might at any moment explode…
There were two unsettling elements of sexuality regarding Todd. The first was his relationship with his mother, which at times, felt too close and on the verge of sexual. And then there was his relationship with the boy, the unnamed victim. At times that seemed to hint at something homosexual. An unacknowledged desire lurking beneath the surface:
‘And what game have I come to play?’ he inquired. ‘I don’t know.’
Todd looked sharply at him and found the answer accompanied by a smile of such absolute candour that he was silenced by it.
And remember the date of the novel, 1967. That was the year in which male homosexuality was decriminalised for the first time in the UK. But only for men over the age of 21. It would have been in the news at the time.
There are two other elements that I want to explore – one is about violence and one is about the behaviour of the victim. The Afterword added to the Boiler House edition of the book is written by Jane White’s daughter in law, although the two never met. Helen Hughes is a senior lecturer in the school of Literature and Languages at the University of Surrey and has access to lots of unpublished material that Jane White left behind. This gives us some wonderful insights. One of these involves William Golding’s The Lod of the Flies which Quarry was compared to at the time it was published. White had included a discussion between Todd, Randy and their school master in which they talk about Golding’s book, which they are obviously studying at school. This was removed from the published version of the book at the recommendation of White’s publisher. He thought that it took something away from the novel, while my own sense is that it would have added an interesting extra layer. The boys were studying Golding’s book, it was on their minds at the time they were also indulging in a similar descent in savagery and loss of civilisation. I like the parallel and also like that we still have the passage that White wrote, in which the boys argue that Golding’s book was about violence.
The last element is about the unnamed victim and his behaviour. He lives in the cave in the quarry, depending on his captors to bring him food and keep him alive, while at the same time inching closer to his death. Why does he not escape and why is no-one looking for him? There is also a Christ like innocence and serenity to his behaviour, which at times make him feel much older than he really is. All these elements are at play throughout but emerge more strongly at the end when the boy is alone having a conversation with Todd.
Todd said,
‘You must be able to tell us something. You behave as if you didn’t exist before we found you that day and brought you here.’
‘But you haven’t told me anything either, you know.’
“I’m willing to tell you anything you want to know – where I live, about my mother, my school, what I do when I’m not here. I can tell you about the others too.’
The boy put out a hand, palm outwards, as if he were directing a stream of traffic.
‘I don’t want to know.’
‘Why not? You must be curious about us, why we brought you here at least, if nothing else.’
‘I’m not.’
‘But why?’
‘I don’t want to know anything about you. It would bore me.’ He brought it out flatly, with insolence. ‘That’s why I don’t ask you any questions.’
Todd, conscious of the light full in his face, compressed his lips with irritation. The boy said, in a softer voice,
‘Don’t you see – all that sort of thing is a waste of time. It doesn’t make any difference to us as we are now.’
Even at the end of the story, when the three older boys conduct a mock trial on their ‘prisoner’ he still remains calm and innocent. Again there is that Christ-like innocence and calm in the face of a fate he already knows.
One last parallel about the timing of the book would be with the gruesome case of the Moors Murders in Britain between 1963 and 1965, when a couple kidnapped and killed five children in an apparently motiveless attempt to commit the perfect crime. Their trial was in 1966, and was again in the news in 1987 when further graves were discovered. Some of the bodies have never been found. Both killers spent the rest of their lives in prison. People at the time were appalled by the lack of a motive. Again something else that was playing out at the time the book was being written.
September 28, 2025
I bought and have now read this forgotten 1967 novel thanks to Christopher Fowler's marvellous books on forgotten novels and authors and the Neglected Books site: https://neglectedbooks.com/?p=8724, but while not regretting either purchasing or reading the novel I am disappointed, not in any of the ways I shelve a book as disappointing, but I unconvinced that it is a successful novel. There are many who have analysed the novel in terms of metaphor (including an excellent essay by Helen Hughes in the new edition but for me the problem with this novel is that it is unconvincing as story. Although at the time of publication and now many reviewers and others drew parallels with 'Lord of the Flies' by William Golding the most obvious difference is that while readers can search and find a multitude of meanings and metaphors in 'Lord of the Flies' it can be read simply as a adventure/horror novel about what happens when a group boys, who don't know each, mostly under the age of thirteen, have to fend for themselves on a south sea island. The metaphors arise from the story, they do not dominate it never mind supplant it.
I am going to now discuss how 'The Quarry' differs from 'Lord of the Flies' and although I do not believe in giving elaborate exegesis it is possible that in contradicting the way the novel is even now is presented it is possible that elements may be revealed.
For me the great weakness is that the motivations of neither the three older boys nor the young boy are never explained. Its all very well drawing elaborate religious origins for the boy or explaining the older boys in terms of fears over delinquency or as stand-ins/updates for the characters in 'A Coral Island' but none their actions make sense. That is a huge difference with 'The Lord of the Flies' - the boys descent into savagery is frightening and appalling because it is totally believable. What happens in 'The Quarry' is shocking but it doesn't arise from the actions of the boys or the insights we are given into their characters. To say that it is all about burying childhood is all very well but that is literary criticism not novelistic exposition.
I found the three protagonists, Todd, Randy and Carter unconvincing - even the friendship between Todd and Randy who are eighteen and the fifteen year old Carter didn't ring true for the time and I am not sure such a friendship would work now. I felt that Carter was there as a fifteen year old for purely 'plot' reason - the author needed someone to 'play' with the boy. The problem with other boys is even greater - they act in a far to childish way - if you look at the illustrations on the original paperback editions this elided by making all the boys appear as if they were 14/15. Try imagining the image with two of those boys as large as eighteen-year-olds. It doesn't work.
The oddest aspects of the novel are the only superficially hinted at homoerotic feelings of Todd for the boy, but the even more complicated relationship between Todd and his mother - and by that his mother and her son. The relationship is referred to as Oedipal by many, but it is more of a case a mother lusting after a son - there is a very bizarre seen were she pulls the sheet away from her naked son and spends an an inordinate amount of time looking at and enjoying his nudity.
I would never want to put anyone off reading this novel, it is interesting, very well written, but I remain unconvinced by it. My four stars reflect those complex feelings of admiration. My words express my reservations - despite which I couldn't rate it any lower.
I am going to now discuss how 'The Quarry' differs from 'Lord of the Flies' and although I do not believe in giving elaborate exegesis it is possible that in contradicting the way the novel is even now is presented it is possible that elements may be revealed.
For me the great weakness is that the motivations of neither the three older boys nor the young boy are never explained. Its all very well drawing elaborate religious origins for the boy or explaining the older boys in terms of fears over delinquency or as stand-ins/updates for the characters in 'A Coral Island' but none their actions make sense. That is a huge difference with 'The Lord of the Flies' - the boys descent into savagery is frightening and appalling because it is totally believable. What happens in 'The Quarry' is shocking but it doesn't arise from the actions of the boys or the insights we are given into their characters. To say that it is all about burying childhood is all very well but that is literary criticism not novelistic exposition.
I found the three protagonists, Todd, Randy and Carter unconvincing - even the friendship between Todd and Randy who are eighteen and the fifteen year old Carter didn't ring true for the time and I am not sure such a friendship would work now. I felt that Carter was there as a fifteen year old for purely 'plot' reason - the author needed someone to 'play' with the boy. The problem with other boys is even greater - they act in a far to childish way - if you look at the illustrations on the original paperback editions this elided by making all the boys appear as if they were 14/15. Try imagining the image with two of those boys as large as eighteen-year-olds. It doesn't work.
The oddest aspects of the novel are the only superficially hinted at homoerotic feelings of Todd for the boy, but the even more complicated relationship between Todd and his mother - and by that his mother and her son. The relationship is referred to as Oedipal by many, but it is more of a case a mother lusting after a son - there is a very bizarre seen were she pulls the sheet away from her naked son and spends an an inordinate amount of time looking at and enjoying his nudity.
I would never want to put anyone off reading this novel, it is interesting, very well written, but I remain unconvinced by it. My four stars reflect those complex feelings of admiration. My words express my reservations - despite which I couldn't rate it any lower.
September 27, 2023
In White's 1967 debut, the kids are definitely not alright. As pastoral England swelters through a June heat wave, teens Carter, Todd, and Randy (an "odd, alarming trio" comprised, respectively, of "physical energy, intellectual brilliance, low cunning") light upon a younger boy and ensconce him in a cave in an abandoned quarry, for reasons seemingly unclear even to themselves. The unnamed boy is a proper lamb, eerily compliant and game to play along, wide-eyed and at his ease. His captors are anything but easy. Surrounded by adults who range from overindulgent to aloof, the teens walk a perilous path, prey to conflicting passions and seeking in vain for boundaries and verities to rebel against. Left to their own devices, they devise their own rite of passage worthy of the Old Testament, or perhaps the New. Along the continuum leading from Richard Hughes's 'A High Wind in Jamaica' to William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies' to Lydia Millet's 'A Children's Bible,' White's enigmatic, unnerving parable evokes the uneasy volatility of its own permissive age. Book groups will appreciate Helen Hughes's (German and film studies, Univ. of Surrey) scholarly afterword, which adds helpful context to White's engrossing ambiguities.
April 29, 2024
This novel occupies that strange world in suburban English fiction of the mid 20th Century: we are not quite out of Barbara Pym territory - our evil schoolboys all find things ‘jolly hard’ or ‘frightfully rough’ - and yet they also share in an angst that they cannot yet ‘fuck’ girls. It’s a disjunction that only helps the novel, aiding that sense of something being not quite right; as though your grandmother, having placed before you the afternoon tea, laments not having had any good dick recently.
The novel is without consequences, but not without consequence. It does, despite its obscurity, join the pantheon of ‘Strange Children’ literature, alongside Hughes, Welch, Hoban, and, of course, Golding.
Finally, not to sound like one of those old male litterateurs who finds the military history section of a bookshop and begins sweating with delight, but the errors in this book, and the formatting, my god! Boiler House press are very small, and I really like them, but when there’s an error on every other page you do feel a little like you’re reading a school newspaper.
The novel is without consequences, but not without consequence. It does, despite its obscurity, join the pantheon of ‘Strange Children’ literature, alongside Hughes, Welch, Hoban, and, of course, Golding.
Finally, not to sound like one of those old male litterateurs who finds the military history section of a bookshop and begins sweating with delight, but the errors in this book, and the formatting, my god! Boiler House press are very small, and I really like them, but when there’s an error on every other page you do feel a little like you’re reading a school newspaper.
Read
August 12, 2023As a former grammar-schoolboy, this was eminently relatable! Seriously, some really breath-taking passages in this.
Read
July 16, 2024Enjoyably twisted. Bit let down by the reprint: typos every five pages or so.
February 2, 2023
Mildly subversive.
December 21, 2023
3.5 stars
July 18, 2025
haunting and strange.... far ahead of her time
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