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Boy A
A is for Apple. A bad apple.? Jack has spent most of his life in juvenile institutions, to be released with a new name, new job, new life. At 24, he is utterly innocent of the world, yet guilty of a monstrous childhood crime. To his new friends, he is a good guy with occasional flashes of unexpected violence. To his new girlfriend, he is strangely inexperienced and unreachable. To his case worker, he?s a victim of the system and of media-driven hysteria. And to himself, Jack is on permanent trial: can he really start from scratch, forget the past, become someone else? Is a new name enough? Can Jack ever truly connect with his new friends while hiding a monstrous secret? This searing and heartfelt novel is a devastating indictment of society?s inability to reconcile childhood innocence with reality.
248 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2004
About the author
Jonathan Trigell
12 books46 followersJonathan Trigell is a British author. His first novel, entitled Boy A, won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 2004, the Waverton Good Read Award and the inaugural World Book Day Prize in 2008.
Jonathan completed an MA in creative writing at Manchester University in 2002. He spent most winters in Alps working in the Ski Industry and now lives in Chamonix, France.
Boy A is the story of a child criminal released into society as an adult. It has obvious and presumably deliberate parallels to the fates of the murderers of James Bulger, although the crime itself differs significantly.
Highly acclaimed critically, Boy A was described by Sarah Waters, Chair of the Judges for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, as "a compelling narrative, a beautifully structured piece of writing, and a thought-provoking novel of ideas. It's a wonderful debut."
Trigell's second novel Cham, familiar name of Chamonix , also acquired by Serpent's Tail publishing house, was published in October 2007.
He is currently working on his third novel, Genesis.
Jonathan completed an MA in creative writing at Manchester University in 2002. He spent most winters in Alps working in the Ski Industry and now lives in Chamonix, France.
Boy A is the story of a child criminal released into society as an adult. It has obvious and presumably deliberate parallels to the fates of the murderers of James Bulger, although the crime itself differs significantly.
Highly acclaimed critically, Boy A was described by Sarah Waters, Chair of the Judges for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, as "a compelling narrative, a beautifully structured piece of writing, and a thought-provoking novel of ideas. It's a wonderful debut."
Trigell's second novel Cham, familiar name of Chamonix , also acquired by Serpent's Tail publishing house, was published in October 2007.
He is currently working on his third novel, Genesis.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 237 reviews
August 8, 2022
Dado el evidente sensacionalismo del tema, empecé su lectura con mucho recelo… a las pocas páginas se habían evaporado todas mis reticencias. El autor consigue hábilmente meterse y meternos en la difícil piel de este niño/joven (la historia discurre en varios planos temporales) que intenta enderezar su vida después del trágico suceso que le llevó al correccional, a la cárcel y, por último, a inventarse una identidad que le permitiera poder seguir con su vida.
¿Puede alguien que comete un acto atroz reinsertarse en la sociedad? ¿Tiene derecho a ello? ¿Un solo acto, por tremendo y espeluznante que sea, puede condicionar el resto de la vida de una persona? ¿La gente con la que convivirá esta persona una vez cumplida su pena tiene derecho a saber qué hizo? ¿Cuánto de lo que somos o hacemos hay que achacarlo a las circunstancias? A todo ello nos impele el autor a dar una respuesta en esta novela sobre la identidad y la responsabilidad en base a un caso en el que ese hecho dramático ocurre en la infancia o en los primeros años de la juventud.
Todos somos conscientes de cómo hemos cambiado a lo largo de los años. Todos tenemos cosas de qué avergonzarnos y todos nos hemos preguntado alguna vez cómo fuimos capaces de comportarnos de esa forma en aquella situación. Porque no somos la misma persona durante todo el transcurso de nuestra vida. Nuestro cerebro, nuestro yo, cambia, aparecen nuevas conexiones neuronales, desaparecen otras, unas se atrofian y otras se acentúan. Y este es nuestro yo, no hay otro. Sin embargo, todos vemos a los demás, e incluso a nosotros mismos, como una identidad invariable a lo largo del tiempo. Nos hacemos, y hacemos a los demás, responsables de todo lo que han hecho a lo largo de su vida, por mucho que sea el tiempo transcurrido y por mucho que la persona sea ahora muy diferente. Son cruces con las que tenemos que cargar queramos o no.
Todo ello envuelto o mezclado con el cruel canibalismo de los medios de comunicación, el hambre de escándalo que todos padecemos en mayor o menor medida y lo maniqueos que podemos llegar a ser al juzgar hechos y personas.
En definitiva, un libro muy, muy interesante, con capítulos realmente emotivos; el del padre del chico lo es especialmente.
June 15, 2017
Posted at Shelf Inflicted
If I hadn’t come across Mariel's review, I’d probably never have found out about this chilling story. To my surprise, it won multiple literary awards and was adapted to film. I really need to get out from under my rock more often.
Boy A is Jack, newly released from prison for the brutal killing of a young girl. He was a child himself when the crime occurred. Now he is 24 years old and trying to adjust to a world that has passed him by while he was imprisoned.
This story is not an exploration of the criminal mind, or about life in prison. It is about Jack’s life as an adult living under an assumed identity while he works, makes friends, and finds love. Jack has the support of his “uncle” Terry, who helps him adjust to life on the outside while protecting him from those who would not let him live his life if they knew about his crime.
I am reminded of Walter Mosley’s Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, a gripping story about a black man released from prison for a murder he committed while in a jealous rage. This story is different, because the man is an adult when he killed. There is no awkward transition between childhood and adulthood. He must live the best life he can while enduring poverty and prejudice.
Because Jack was a child when he killed, public outrage and media hysteria are at its worst. It is not enough for a criminal to do his time. He must pay for his mistakes the rest of his life. While Boy A is Jack’s story, it is also a commentary on the inadequacy of the prison system, how media can damage lives, and the influences parents, friends, and others can have on impressionable young lives.
I want to believe that Jack made it to the boat safely.
If I hadn’t come across Mariel's review, I’d probably never have found out about this chilling story. To my surprise, it won multiple literary awards and was adapted to film. I really need to get out from under my rock more often.
Boy A is Jack, newly released from prison for the brutal killing of a young girl. He was a child himself when the crime occurred. Now he is 24 years old and trying to adjust to a world that has passed him by while he was imprisoned.
This story is not an exploration of the criminal mind, or about life in prison. It is about Jack’s life as an adult living under an assumed identity while he works, makes friends, and finds love. Jack has the support of his “uncle” Terry, who helps him adjust to life on the outside while protecting him from those who would not let him live his life if they knew about his crime.
I am reminded of Walter Mosley’s Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, a gripping story about a black man released from prison for a murder he committed while in a jealous rage. This story is different, because the man is an adult when he killed. There is no awkward transition between childhood and adulthood. He must live the best life he can while enduring poverty and prejudice.
Because Jack was a child when he killed, public outrage and media hysteria are at its worst. It is not enough for a criminal to do his time. He must pay for his mistakes the rest of his life. While Boy A is Jack’s story, it is also a commentary on the inadequacy of the prison system, how media can damage lives, and the influences parents, friends, and others can have on impressionable young lives.
I want to believe that Jack made it to the boat safely.
June 20, 2011
This isn't a spoiler tag but a longwinded tag. (I'm embarrassed tag.)
Words are not my first emotional language. I'll think without words and later try to come up with some that fit what I was feeling, if enough of it sticks by me through the thickness and thinness. The way I understand (assuming I understand what I believe I understand) things is feeling out what people mean based on whatever I can get out of posture, tone, facial movements, eyes that don't smile, spaces between words and silences. (My social retardedness definitions. I can't be right 'cause I do the wrong thing a lot.) What is around them, what isn't. I'll want to match it with my own. Bittersweet smile? Heartbroken movement of lips with words unsaid? (It probably comes out of being shy. The watching is from hope that there's more to life.) Sometimes it is nothing I get and another part of my life disappears from me like one of those time eaters from Stephen King's The Langoliers (not even with their sharp teeth. It isn't important enough to be painful). Sometimes it'll later occur to me that something that happened before reminds me of something else (most of the time that something is movies, or built up stories I've made up to make my own surroundings feel more vivid and worth getting up for). What I really live for is to take a start of something I've watched, to feel I might have slipped inside some kind of ellipsis mental space of someone else, and shared something real and enhance further "experience". A posture that goes beyond what they are saying. "He looks nervous that something good might happen." "She feels like she's a kid again." Anything that's more than distanced strangers talk. I'm not going to know MOST people I'll encounter very well. That's one of the wonderful things about stories, the knowing. (Not to mention they give me the experience to understand how I might've felt some other time, let alone imagine how someone else felt. Not in the "We both knew that..." Kevin Arnold voice over Wonder Years way. He's a jerk. He didn't KNOW anything they knew. Just maybe...a hope? That something special happened. Maybe.)
There's a failing with me, I've been feeling. It's words with a real meaning. It is harder for me to get out of words what I feel drawn towards in people spaces. Words come last. What's the definition? I've said all this before, probably. The experience feels less like experience of my own if I don't feel like I was there to listen to something. I'm almost there, I can imagine it and then I try to imagine the faces in my mind and if they look happy or sad, which shade of it, how long did it last, was there regret... It doesn't feel alive like a twist in one way it wouldn't have happened. It's different when the writing feels like the words were born in their brain already and they didn't have dark search for them. (Nabokov is one of those. Elizabeth Bowen reads to me like a mind reader. There's talk about psychological novels? It's better than that. Mind reading novels that fit in the way that psych labels never could. Those feel homogenized.)
Sometimes I feel like everything I "know" is forgotten like the times you can't remember your own phone number and the harder you try to get it back the further away it gets.
I don't know which one Boy A fits into. Jack spends all his brain trying to live as if one moment (a murder) happens forever and he's a kid forever. He's not a kid forever. It didn't happen forever. Where's the space that's your own brain and no one else can ever take it away from you? It is lost in different ways. In the eyes of everyone who didn't believe he could be anyone else (in freaking hindsight!). There are words (It didn't do it. That wasn't me) and there are words that should be ignored (This is all I'll ever be) and listen to the dark searching for who he is (There isn't only darkness inside a person). Possibilities? What about hope? What about that...
Anyway, it's a weird space of no thought and trying to convince, which feels to me like too much thinking, when inside the irises of those who don't not feel around in the dark in a way that feels natural to me.
The 2007 film Boy A is one of my favorites. I saw it before I read the novel. The film is one of the most faithful adaptations I've seen. Many of the events are the same. It's different like walking into the same room with lights on or off. (The film has more flashbacks to childhood than the book. The film doesn't have the scenes of Jack's time in prison.) What I read off of Jack in words and off of Jack of flesh (played by Andrew Garfield in the film) was different. Jack of the book is words spoken by people in his life and past. Often words spoken by people who did not see him at all. Jack was afraid to be seen even as he was desperate to be seen. If I were in that room I would have been looking for that. I wouldn't have been looking to see if I could write someone off or not.
It was a suspended feeling for me to try and see past those visions to something I could believe. Is it my failing and I don't get how others see other people? Stories are all from different eyes and yet I felt like this time it was less my eyes. Maybe I'm weird. The film felt like reading Jack from Andrew Garfield. His shame to continue living and the desire that might beat past that to live anyway. The potential for violence (that had happened, tragically killing himself as he helped kill someone else. When he was a kid) that is dormant, what happens to bring out that side of him, how it might have happened differently if something else had happened differently. People are capable of all sorts of things. The people who were out for blood to kill Jack, like they were the law themselves, were no less violent than he (who did not set out to kill anyone that morning). If people are capable of anything, they are capable of anything. Do they get to say that when something bad happens and never for the good? His struggle to live with the guilt and shame, make a new life... It was in every afraid to raise his voice word that Garfield spoke as Jack. His afraid to be happy smiles. Grateful for anything good at all.
(There's a discussion questionnaire in the back of the book that is good. I liked the one about why kid killers are considered to be more evil than adult killers.)
The book showed Jack through different eyes. Jack's clinginess towards Terry. He loves him, maybe he needs him more. What if he had had that love sooner in his life? Is it need only? It is written that he feels guilty that Terry spends more time with Jack than he does with his son, Zeb. It was written... yet that was all I could see. Terry feels it is okay to like Jack more when someone else he likes (Jack's new landlady) also seems to like Jack (she does not know who he really is). It was more telling to me that he does not talk about his part in the killing, of how he fears losing Terry, than it did when it is stated how he feels. The unsaid says more to me because it feels it is there to see, weighting words. Son Zeb feels that Jack stole his father (in reality, he himself chose not to see his dad, blaming his parents divorce on his dad's work with inmates he tried to help adjust to life outside). The pride Terry feels in how far Jack has come shows in the eyes on the screen, in how he puts his arm on his shoulder. Zeb must hear it in his dad's voice and wonder how a murderer could ever do anything to be proud of. He cannot forgive something that happened years ago (a divorce). How could he ever understand that a whole life isn't made up of one event?
It wouldn't have occured to me to read fear in Terry of getting too close because of who Jack was. Because the media whips up frenzy over new cases? Adults killing kids would be old (unless they were blonde and pretty). How was he any different than any other inmate Terry would have worked with? Terry who says that he is a new man now. Says, says, says. I need to look into the eyes and see which is true. Film Terry I believe had hope that he was a new man.
Jack of the book is rooted in a rootless way to the childhood he didn't have. His childhood before the murder, before prison. A childhood of disgusted neglect at home, brutal neglect at school. Bullies and fear and unforgivingness. No one would stand up for him and say that they didn't see it coming all along. Boy A ceases to have a name (in the film he is Eric). He's the killer of the little girl, loved by all who did not know her when she was alive. (If Boy B had been born several months earlier, Boy A would have taken all of the blame himself.) As if they didn't purposely not see him at all. After the murder, well, he grows up in prison. Boy A's prison therapist notes that he is childish for someone of his age (when he is seventeen). He tells her what she wants to hear (that he killed the girl as much as Boy B did) so that he will be allowed to continue seeing his case worker, Terry. This is what we want you to know, right? The eyes of a note taking shrink desperately desirous of awards were not ones I would have chosen. I believed he was childish when Jack reacts to his situations as if he had no experience in which to judge anything by. He has the fear of letting on that he has no experience.
Jack feels he is not allowed to live past what had happened to him before because he does not deserve it. The hesitation, a hopeful look, closed mouth again. If he could admit to his new friends, especially his new girlfriend, who he was... Is lying about who he is another crime, another betrayal of trust? The happiest time he has ever known. Is it a lie because they don't really know him? After he is exposed and the wrath of England is upon him once more, Jack leaves Chris a message imploring him that it was really him all along, as if a plea for it to be true, to be seen as something else than a child murderer. I felt the plea in the words. It wasn't what was true because it couldn't be the truth or untruth. He was Boy A. He was also Jack who saved a little girl from a car wreck with his workmate Chris. A guy who wanted to be someone. Future...
Terry was wrong that he could just be a new man. I think the whole point was that one man isn't one thing only. The point of the film was also a message to England who go blood crazy and want to hang and imprison for life, regardless of sentences and time served. Vigilante justice. People there have had to hide for being falsely accused of being killers by the media. I know that's the point too (not one that goes over very well, if hatred for Samantha Morton playing Myra Hindley in Longford tv movie was any indication. That was about the lawyer fighting to get her released when she was kept past her sentence. I'm sure Garfield got some hatin' too. I'm sure Trigell got some hating!). Quotes on the book jacket talk about Trigell building sympathy for Boy A, maybe as if it were a magician's trick and Jack wouldn't have deserved it otherwise. I think the point is paying attention to people and trying to listen enough to find out why people do anything. If anyone had cared that Boy A was beaten up on, or that Boy B was raped by his brother, that the two never went to school anymore. That they gave themselves up to abandon because that was the only time they felt free. But people don't want to think about why pitt bulls who are trained for violence attack kids either. They'd rather put down the dog and ban them from city limits. They were written off as dogs. There was potential for good as well as violence in Jack.
I pay attention better by watching than by what people say. If I hadn't seen the film I might have seen Jack as a young man who thought more about what other people thought of him than as a man who was afraid to live with himself as he truly was, if he wasn't capable of being more than he had been.
Do actions speak louder than words? (It depends on what kinds of words and how they are spoken.) True spoiler ahead
Jack kills himself in the end. What speaks the loudest? Did he die because he was afraid to live with people once they knew what he had been? That the words that would always be the loudest were those?
What would his eyes have said? Did he reconsider right after he jumped? (What life flashed before his life? That might tell him once and for all what he decided his own life was.) Or did he hope that someone understood?
I would want to understand... I would want to read and hope for hope.
Stats are a dangerous thing. I hate seeing stats and end results and those words.
Words are not my first emotional language. I'll think without words and later try to come up with some that fit what I was feeling, if enough of it sticks by me through the thickness and thinness. The way I understand (assuming I understand what I believe I understand) things is feeling out what people mean based on whatever I can get out of posture, tone, facial movements, eyes that don't smile, spaces between words and silences. (My social retardedness definitions. I can't be right 'cause I do the wrong thing a lot.) What is around them, what isn't. I'll want to match it with my own. Bittersweet smile? Heartbroken movement of lips with words unsaid? (It probably comes out of being shy. The watching is from hope that there's more to life.) Sometimes it is nothing I get and another part of my life disappears from me like one of those time eaters from Stephen King's The Langoliers (not even with their sharp teeth. It isn't important enough to be painful). Sometimes it'll later occur to me that something that happened before reminds me of something else (most of the time that something is movies, or built up stories I've made up to make my own surroundings feel more vivid and worth getting up for). What I really live for is to take a start of something I've watched, to feel I might have slipped inside some kind of ellipsis mental space of someone else, and shared something real and enhance further "experience". A posture that goes beyond what they are saying. "He looks nervous that something good might happen." "She feels like she's a kid again." Anything that's more than distanced strangers talk. I'm not going to know MOST people I'll encounter very well. That's one of the wonderful things about stories, the knowing. (Not to mention they give me the experience to understand how I might've felt some other time, let alone imagine how someone else felt. Not in the "We both knew that..." Kevin Arnold voice over Wonder Years way. He's a jerk. He didn't KNOW anything they knew. Just maybe...a hope? That something special happened. Maybe.)
There's a failing with me, I've been feeling. It's words with a real meaning. It is harder for me to get out of words what I feel drawn towards in people spaces. Words come last. What's the definition? I've said all this before, probably. The experience feels less like experience of my own if I don't feel like I was there to listen to something. I'm almost there, I can imagine it and then I try to imagine the faces in my mind and if they look happy or sad, which shade of it, how long did it last, was there regret... It doesn't feel alive like a twist in one way it wouldn't have happened. It's different when the writing feels like the words were born in their brain already and they didn't have dark search for them. (Nabokov is one of those. Elizabeth Bowen reads to me like a mind reader. There's talk about psychological novels? It's better than that. Mind reading novels that fit in the way that psych labels never could. Those feel homogenized.)
Sometimes I feel like everything I "know" is forgotten like the times you can't remember your own phone number and the harder you try to get it back the further away it gets.
I don't know which one Boy A fits into. Jack spends all his brain trying to live as if one moment (a murder) happens forever and he's a kid forever. He's not a kid forever. It didn't happen forever. Where's the space that's your own brain and no one else can ever take it away from you? It is lost in different ways. In the eyes of everyone who didn't believe he could be anyone else (in freaking hindsight!). There are words (It didn't do it. That wasn't me) and there are words that should be ignored (This is all I'll ever be) and listen to the dark searching for who he is (There isn't only darkness inside a person). Possibilities? What about hope? What about that...
Anyway, it's a weird space of no thought and trying to convince, which feels to me like too much thinking, when inside the irises of those who don't not feel around in the dark in a way that feels natural to me.
The 2007 film Boy A is one of my favorites. I saw it before I read the novel. The film is one of the most faithful adaptations I've seen. Many of the events are the same. It's different like walking into the same room with lights on or off. (The film has more flashbacks to childhood than the book. The film doesn't have the scenes of Jack's time in prison.) What I read off of Jack in words and off of Jack of flesh (played by Andrew Garfield in the film) was different. Jack of the book is words spoken by people in his life and past. Often words spoken by people who did not see him at all. Jack was afraid to be seen even as he was desperate to be seen. If I were in that room I would have been looking for that. I wouldn't have been looking to see if I could write someone off or not.
It was a suspended feeling for me to try and see past those visions to something I could believe. Is it my failing and I don't get how others see other people? Stories are all from different eyes and yet I felt like this time it was less my eyes. Maybe I'm weird. The film felt like reading Jack from Andrew Garfield. His shame to continue living and the desire that might beat past that to live anyway. The potential for violence (that had happened, tragically killing himself as he helped kill someone else. When he was a kid) that is dormant, what happens to bring out that side of him, how it might have happened differently if something else had happened differently. People are capable of all sorts of things. The people who were out for blood to kill Jack, like they were the law themselves, were no less violent than he (who did not set out to kill anyone that morning). If people are capable of anything, they are capable of anything. Do they get to say that when something bad happens and never for the good? His struggle to live with the guilt and shame, make a new life... It was in every afraid to raise his voice word that Garfield spoke as Jack. His afraid to be happy smiles. Grateful for anything good at all.
(There's a discussion questionnaire in the back of the book that is good. I liked the one about why kid killers are considered to be more evil than adult killers.)
The book showed Jack through different eyes. Jack's clinginess towards Terry. He loves him, maybe he needs him more. What if he had had that love sooner in his life? Is it need only? It is written that he feels guilty that Terry spends more time with Jack than he does with his son, Zeb. It was written... yet that was all I could see. Terry feels it is okay to like Jack more when someone else he likes (Jack's new landlady) also seems to like Jack (she does not know who he really is). It was more telling to me that he does not talk about his part in the killing, of how he fears losing Terry, than it did when it is stated how he feels. The unsaid says more to me because it feels it is there to see, weighting words. Son Zeb feels that Jack stole his father (in reality, he himself chose not to see his dad, blaming his parents divorce on his dad's work with inmates he tried to help adjust to life outside). The pride Terry feels in how far Jack has come shows in the eyes on the screen, in how he puts his arm on his shoulder. Zeb must hear it in his dad's voice and wonder how a murderer could ever do anything to be proud of. He cannot forgive something that happened years ago (a divorce). How could he ever understand that a whole life isn't made up of one event?
It wouldn't have occured to me to read fear in Terry of getting too close because of who Jack was. Because the media whips up frenzy over new cases? Adults killing kids would be old (unless they were blonde and pretty). How was he any different than any other inmate Terry would have worked with? Terry who says that he is a new man now. Says, says, says. I need to look into the eyes and see which is true. Film Terry I believe had hope that he was a new man.
Jack of the book is rooted in a rootless way to the childhood he didn't have. His childhood before the murder, before prison. A childhood of disgusted neglect at home, brutal neglect at school. Bullies and fear and unforgivingness. No one would stand up for him and say that they didn't see it coming all along. Boy A ceases to have a name (in the film he is Eric). He's the killer of the little girl, loved by all who did not know her when she was alive. (If Boy B had been born several months earlier, Boy A would have taken all of the blame himself.) As if they didn't purposely not see him at all. After the murder, well, he grows up in prison. Boy A's prison therapist notes that he is childish for someone of his age (when he is seventeen). He tells her what she wants to hear (that he killed the girl as much as Boy B did) so that he will be allowed to continue seeing his case worker, Terry. This is what we want you to know, right? The eyes of a note taking shrink desperately desirous of awards were not ones I would have chosen. I believed he was childish when Jack reacts to his situations as if he had no experience in which to judge anything by. He has the fear of letting on that he has no experience.
Jack feels he is not allowed to live past what had happened to him before because he does not deserve it. The hesitation, a hopeful look, closed mouth again. If he could admit to his new friends, especially his new girlfriend, who he was... Is lying about who he is another crime, another betrayal of trust? The happiest time he has ever known. Is it a lie because they don't really know him? After he is exposed and the wrath of England is upon him once more, Jack leaves Chris a message imploring him that it was really him all along, as if a plea for it to be true, to be seen as something else than a child murderer. I felt the plea in the words. It wasn't what was true because it couldn't be the truth or untruth. He was Boy A. He was also Jack who saved a little girl from a car wreck with his workmate Chris. A guy who wanted to be someone. Future...
Terry was wrong that he could just be a new man. I think the whole point was that one man isn't one thing only. The point of the film was also a message to England who go blood crazy and want to hang and imprison for life, regardless of sentences and time served. Vigilante justice. People there have had to hide for being falsely accused of being killers by the media. I know that's the point too (not one that goes over very well, if hatred for Samantha Morton playing Myra Hindley in Longford tv movie was any indication. That was about the lawyer fighting to get her released when she was kept past her sentence. I'm sure Garfield got some hatin' too. I'm sure Trigell got some hating!). Quotes on the book jacket talk about Trigell building sympathy for Boy A, maybe as if it were a magician's trick and Jack wouldn't have deserved it otherwise. I think the point is paying attention to people and trying to listen enough to find out why people do anything. If anyone had cared that Boy A was beaten up on, or that Boy B was raped by his brother, that the two never went to school anymore. That they gave themselves up to abandon because that was the only time they felt free. But people don't want to think about why pitt bulls who are trained for violence attack kids either. They'd rather put down the dog and ban them from city limits. They were written off as dogs. There was potential for good as well as violence in Jack.
I pay attention better by watching than by what people say. If I hadn't seen the film I might have seen Jack as a young man who thought more about what other people thought of him than as a man who was afraid to live with himself as he truly was, if he wasn't capable of being more than he had been.
Do actions speak louder than words? (It depends on what kinds of words and how they are spoken.) True spoiler ahead
Jack kills himself in the end. What speaks the loudest? Did he die because he was afraid to live with people once they knew what he had been? That the words that would always be the loudest were those?
What would his eyes have said? Did he reconsider right after he jumped? (What life flashed before his life? That might tell him once and for all what he decided his own life was.) Or did he hope that someone understood?
I would want to understand... I would want to read and hope for hope.
Stats are a dangerous thing. I hate seeing stats and end results and those words.
October 10, 2017
"Deca mogu biti čudovišta. Danas to znamo. Ali nekada su deca bila samo deca."
Niti kraće knjige niti teže teme. Emotivni maraton.
Trčanje u susret nevremenu, buri koja je neminovna.
Prikaz je na blogu:
http://totallyrandombyc.blogspot.rs/2...
Niti kraće knjige niti teže teme. Emotivni maraton.
Trčanje u susret nevremenu, buri koja je neminovna.
Prikaz je na blogu:
http://totallyrandombyc.blogspot.rs/2...
August 31, 2008
Okay I went back and took stars off some of my other reviews because this is one of those pieces of art that reminds you that most people are not hitting the ideal. Yes art is subjective, but somethings seem to just have something special that other pieces don't have. This is one of those pieces. Out of five stars I give it 7 and 1/2.
This book has a format that makes it flow. Instead of a few long chapters there are a lot of short chapters named for the letters of the alphabet such as A is for Apple, Bad Apple. Things that I think we tend to subconsciously ignore but when you are paying attention add interesting layers into the book.
This is by far the most moving book I have ever read. All of the characters come off as real without any defined "evil", or at least leaving this up to interpretation. As the book states at one point people are complicated. Even with the devastating plot of the book I found myself wishing that this was true.
In addition to the fact I think that this book should be forced upon every person on the planet, I think it is especially important for people interested in literary and cultural theory as well as writers as an exemplary example of an author molding the classic format of literature to modern subject matter and beliefs.
The book provokes questions about society, family, prisons, and innocence. The concept behind the story is fascinating before you even pick it up, and the writing is fantastic to compliment the story itself.
This book has a format that makes it flow. Instead of a few long chapters there are a lot of short chapters named for the letters of the alphabet such as A is for Apple, Bad Apple. Things that I think we tend to subconsciously ignore but when you are paying attention add interesting layers into the book.
This is by far the most moving book I have ever read. All of the characters come off as real without any defined "evil", or at least leaving this up to interpretation. As the book states at one point people are complicated. Even with the devastating plot of the book I found myself wishing that this was true.
In addition to the fact I think that this book should be forced upon every person on the planet, I think it is especially important for people interested in literary and cultural theory as well as writers as an exemplary example of an author molding the classic format of literature to modern subject matter and beliefs.
The book provokes questions about society, family, prisons, and innocence. The concept behind the story is fascinating before you even pick it up, and the writing is fantastic to compliment the story itself.
July 27, 2016
Upotrebiću reč, koju sam videla da je neko napisao na poleđini ove knjige, fantastično.
Ako niste, obavezno pogledajte i film. Recenzija sledi.
Recenzija je najzad na blogu
http://thestuffdreamsaremadeof21.blog...
Ako niste, obavezno pogledajte i film. Recenzija sledi.
Recenzija je najzad na blogu
http://thestuffdreamsaremadeof21.blog...
January 11, 2019
Hello there FEELINGS, how are you today?
I was ready to give this two stars until the 50% mark. The story moved along a little too slowly for me, a little too haphazardly. Sure, the characters were, maybe great isn't the right word, but intriguing. Ever so intriguing. Still, I thought, this will probably get two stars. Man, was I wrong.
Boy A will be on my top reads of 2015. I'm considering bumping up my rating to five stars. Because that last half. Emotions. Scattered all over the place. I'm not sorry to say some of my friends literally told me to take it easy, not ramble so much incoherent gushing. Right now I'm still not done gushing out my feels for this book, so I apologize if this review is a mess.
Boy A is the story of Jack, who after years in prison is now released to the real world. His crime? When he was in his early teens, he and another boy murdered a young girl, Angela, and it became a national tragedy. The boys were hounded, terrorized by media, and generally what you'd expect. When Jack is released from prison he gets to choose his own name, which he decides will be Jack. In the real world he is nobody, a new person and almost no one knows his history or birth name. He's free from the people who bullied him when he was young, free from all bad childhood memories, and most importantly, his crime, although that still haunts his mind. But now he can experience friends, having a girlfriend, living on his own.
Let me tell you this: Jack's character isn't the most important part of the story. It's about how people are affected, family and friends, the country, people involved with the crime. It's about who is guilty, and what guilt is. It's about power and desire. It's about so much.
In the end thought, it's hard to say who is right and who is wrong. A tragedy will always be a tragedy, but there can always be more to the story. Maybe it's impossible to win.
I was ready to give this two stars until the 50% mark. The story moved along a little too slowly for me, a little too haphazardly. Sure, the characters were, maybe great isn't the right word, but intriguing. Ever so intriguing. Still, I thought, this will probably get two stars. Man, was I wrong.
Boy A will be on my top reads of 2015. I'm considering bumping up my rating to five stars. Because that last half. Emotions. Scattered all over the place. I'm not sorry to say some of my friends literally told me to take it easy, not ramble so much incoherent gushing. Right now I'm still not done gushing out my feels for this book, so I apologize if this review is a mess.
Boy A is the story of Jack, who after years in prison is now released to the real world. His crime? When he was in his early teens, he and another boy murdered a young girl, Angela, and it became a national tragedy. The boys were hounded, terrorized by media, and generally what you'd expect. When Jack is released from prison he gets to choose his own name, which he decides will be Jack. In the real world he is nobody, a new person and almost no one knows his history or birth name. He's free from the people who bullied him when he was young, free from all bad childhood memories, and most importantly, his crime, although that still haunts his mind. But now he can experience friends, having a girlfriend, living on his own.
If Jack had been nine months younger he would have been innocent, simple as that. How can you have definitions and scales about murder? Why was it all right for the CIA to kill Che in cold blood, a man who really might have changed the world? Or the innocent people in Chile, Argentina, East Timor, Congo, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Haiti, Guatemala, Turkey, Brazil, the Philippines. Political mass murders, that are lucky to make the paper at all. Crimes committed by mercenaries, men who kill for money, not seen to be as bad as someone who acts from some nameless sickness, shameless sudden impulse?
Let me tell you this: Jack's character isn't the most important part of the story. It's about how people are affected, family and friends, the country, people involved with the crime. It's about who is guilty, and what guilt is. It's about power and desire. It's about so much.
Does that mean he's evil? Or is it without those urges he could not be good? If being good is a denial of the bad then those we deem evil are not worse, they are weaker. And if goodness means anything at all, surely it means the strong helping the weak.
In the end thought, it's hard to say who is right and who is wrong. A tragedy will always be a tragedy, but there can always be more to the story. Maybe it's impossible to win.
Only the young die good. And Angela Milton died young enough to be perfect. A martyr to modern society. Evidence that we are fucked. Though records suggest we always have been.
April 17, 2013
It mirrors the tragic story of Jamie Bulger. We meet Jack as he is released back in to society secretly after spending all his young life in institutions and prisons. He is supported by the child like faith his support officer, Terry, has in him to be a functioning member of society. Everything is difficult for Jack as he hasn’t had a life yet and he suddenly has a freedom to experience what for others are ordinary things. Of course, inevitably events catch up with him and through the unrelenting spite and resentfulness of Zeb, Terry’s son, he is exposed once again to the anger of society for his wicked child hood crime of murder of a young girl. Without Boy B, you feel sure he would never have had the nerve to do this but there are many influences on him leading him inexorably to this path in his life.
Jack starts very warily and as events progress it might be alright. He lives very much in the present as his experiences unfold. Every character is understandable as the author tracks heir thought process. I didn’t really feel a strong like or dislike for any one as they are all just people at the mercy of their own wants and character flaws. Zeb brings it all down eventually but even he is understandable in his rage at his neglectful father Terry. It’s funny that never really feel revulsion for Boy A, it is more a head shaking sadness that any of it ever happened. Such an evil mix of circumstances makes it all feel so inevitable.
It is a very creditable plotline, having basis in reality. Boy A haunted and hunted by demons, one of which is the press which hounds him mercilessly. His life was ruined while he was still innocent which seems the source of the tragedy, the murder of the girl is strangely slightly less emotive. It unfolds with a sense of hopefulness that then becomes impending doom.
I approached this book with a certain amount of reluctance as I still cannot bear to think about the fate of Jamie Bulger. The story progresses at a decent rate. Whilst dipping back into the past to give the platform for what is happening.The characters are all very real in all the range of human weaknesses, impulses and good intentions. The interaction of the characters does make for compulsive reading.
The whole book is somewhat uncomfortable reading because of the subject matter. It is very a very difficult subject to write about and Jonathan Trigell writes it very well in deed. If anything. It re-enforced to me how your life can get out of control and take a totally different path as a result of events and people that you don’t know about, impacting on you. And how people can work against people for no particular good reason, just spite.
The ending was rather escapist, leaving you uncertain as to the actual fate of Boy A but feeling he jumps and disappears. Frozen in time like the last still of ‘ Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’
Jack starts very warily and as events progress it might be alright. He lives very much in the present as his experiences unfold. Every character is understandable as the author tracks heir thought process. I didn’t really feel a strong like or dislike for any one as they are all just people at the mercy of their own wants and character flaws. Zeb brings it all down eventually but even he is understandable in his rage at his neglectful father Terry. It’s funny that never really feel revulsion for Boy A, it is more a head shaking sadness that any of it ever happened. Such an evil mix of circumstances makes it all feel so inevitable.
It is a very creditable plotline, having basis in reality. Boy A haunted and hunted by demons, one of which is the press which hounds him mercilessly. His life was ruined while he was still innocent which seems the source of the tragedy, the murder of the girl is strangely slightly less emotive. It unfolds with a sense of hopefulness that then becomes impending doom.
I approached this book with a certain amount of reluctance as I still cannot bear to think about the fate of Jamie Bulger. The story progresses at a decent rate. Whilst dipping back into the past to give the platform for what is happening.The characters are all very real in all the range of human weaknesses, impulses and good intentions. The interaction of the characters does make for compulsive reading.
The whole book is somewhat uncomfortable reading because of the subject matter. It is very a very difficult subject to write about and Jonathan Trigell writes it very well in deed. If anything. It re-enforced to me how your life can get out of control and take a totally different path as a result of events and people that you don’t know about, impacting on you. And how people can work against people for no particular good reason, just spite.
The ending was rather escapist, leaving you uncertain as to the actual fate of Boy A but feeling he jumps and disappears. Frozen in time like the last still of ‘ Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’
August 21, 2013
It was an interesting idea. Sort of, though the author denied it, based on the murder of Jamie Bulger in the early 1990s by two young teenagers. Was their horrific crime nature or nurture, can imprisonment really be the best way to deal with the actions of a child. I really wanted this book to provide some thoughtful and deep insight in what he imagined had happened, and what it might be like to emerge from prison, entering as a young boy, leaving as a man? I was hugely disappointed. It was an exploitative book, published to coincide with the boys release from prison, again the author denies any connection...The characters were shallow, undeveloped, some were pointless. It tried to present a authentic and realistic view of what the situation might have been like for boy A , but the relationship between boy a and his dedicated officer was ridiculous, and don't even get me started on the love interest. I was a good idea, but shame it wasn't written by someone else, a someone else who had the skill and imagination to write a great piece of fiction whilst tackling some of those big questions that are begging to be addressed. Such a shame!
August 25, 2022
3,5 estrellitas. Se lee con agrado, pero creo que tenía potencial para más.
La premisa del libro es interesante: ¿puede un delincuente rehabilitarse? ¿Debe la sociedad perdonar y olvidar, y permitir reinsertarse a quien ya ha cumplido condena? ¿Cambia la gente con los años, es posible que quien ha cometido un delito años atrás sea, décadas después, un ciudadano ejemplar? ¿Y qué sucede cuando, ocurriendo así, la prensa amarilla y el odio social le persiguen hasta hacer la reinserción absolutamente imposible?
Sí, interesante, muy interesante el planteamiento. Sin embargo, el libro en su conjunto no me lo ha parecido tanto.
Veamos, es un libro fácil de leer, cómodo, ameno incluso. Se lee con interés y agilidad, y, a pesar de sus “trampas” (ver en spoiler), va gustando. Sin embargo, al final no puedo evitar la sensación de que se queda a medio gas, que no llega a profundizar. No es un libro valiente, lo que se nota tanto en esas “trampas” comentadas como en su final. En fin, que me he quedado con la sensación de que no está mal pero al autor le han faltado agallas para hacer un buen libro. Así que 3,5 estrellitas.
Y ahora, para quien le interese, mis argumentos en spoiler:
La premisa del libro es interesante: ¿puede un delincuente rehabilitarse? ¿Debe la sociedad perdonar y olvidar, y permitir reinsertarse a quien ya ha cumplido condena? ¿Cambia la gente con los años, es posible que quien ha cometido un delito años atrás sea, décadas después, un ciudadano ejemplar? ¿Y qué sucede cuando, ocurriendo así, la prensa amarilla y el odio social le persiguen hasta hacer la reinserción absolutamente imposible?
Sí, interesante, muy interesante el planteamiento. Sin embargo, el libro en su conjunto no me lo ha parecido tanto.
Veamos, es un libro fácil de leer, cómodo, ameno incluso. Se lee con interés y agilidad, y, a pesar de sus “trampas” (ver en spoiler), va gustando. Sin embargo, al final no puedo evitar la sensación de que se queda a medio gas, que no llega a profundizar. No es un libro valiente, lo que se nota tanto en esas “trampas” comentadas como en su final. En fin, que me he quedado con la sensación de que no está mal pero al autor le han faltado agallas para hacer un buen libro. Así que 3,5 estrellitas.
Y ahora, para quien le interese, mis argumentos en spoiler:
January 7, 2023
Por partes. Y de menos a más.
Como libro es sin más, bastante plano y aburrido a ratos, con un elenco de personajes que en su mayoría ni fú ni fá y una narración simple que ni bien ni mal.
Como historia no está mal, aunque como buena amante del true crime que soy, la mejor parte ha sido la investigación personal sobre el caso real en el que está basado (asesinato de James Bulger). No conocía la historia y me ha dejado verdaderamente impresionada y ha eclipsado la lectura del libro totalmente.
Pero sin duda lo mejor son las cuestiones morales que se plantean, para las que no sé si existe una respuesta correcta.
Como libro es sin más, bastante plano y aburrido a ratos, con un elenco de personajes que en su mayoría ni fú ni fá y una narración simple que ni bien ni mal.
Como historia no está mal, aunque como buena amante del true crime que soy, la mejor parte ha sido la investigación personal sobre el caso real en el que está basado (asesinato de James Bulger). No conocía la historia y me ha dejado verdaderamente impresionada y ha eclipsado la lectura del libro totalmente.
Pero sin duda lo mejor son las cuestiones morales que se plantean, para las que no sé si existe una respuesta correcta.
May 2, 2019
𝓢𝓡𝓑:
Postoje dve teme koje aktivno izbegavam svaki put kada čitam: prva su ratni logori i mučenja, druga je maloletna delikvencija. Ipak kada sam birala četri knjige sa jedne od akcija prijatelj kome apsolutno verujem, Kaća, mi je rekla da uzmem knjigu bez obzira na tešku tematiku. Znala sam da što pre moram da prođem kroz ovu knjigu, moja logika je uvek bila ista-ono od čega bežiš je ono sa čim prvo treba da se suočiš. Bila sam iznenađena naracijom autora, očekivala sam težu i negde depresivniju naraciju, međutim sposobnost autora da prikaže početak novog života pod novim identitetom i sama ideja da život zaista teče dalje i da se svi mi uigramo u rutinu života je fantastična. Naracija iz prošlosti ima drugačiji ton a opet zadržava gotovo identičnu emociju. Priče dečaka A i dečaka B nisu preterano tragične i veoma je jasno da sam autor ne želi da se mi, kao čitaoci, poistovetimo ili saosećamo sa njima. Dopada mi se što krivica nije smeštena ni na jednu stranu. Jednostavno ona je prisutna kao činjenica, zato ne možeš da žališ jednog od dečaka a opet sa druge strane možeš da podržavaš Džekov novi život. Još jedna pozitivna stvar je što autor prikazuje koliko pozitivan uticaj stvara pozitivan život i koliko negativan uticaj radi potpuno suprotno. Autor koristi jednostavan, gradski jezik, pa je knjiga veoma "lagana" za čitanje i razumevanje. Šta mi se nije dopalo? Nisam mogla da osetim ovu knjigu, nikako. Ono što meni izdvaja dobru od fantastične knjige je sposobnost osećanja onoga što sam čitala ovde toga jednostavno nema. Takođe mogu da kažem da mi je celo razrešenje događaja bilo malo ubrzano i negde napisano samo da bi postojalo tu, ali to je samo moje mišljenje. Kraj je ipak bio fantastičan. Sve u svemu ako želite da pročitate ovu knjgigu ja mogu da vam dam zeleno svetlo. Vredi.
------------------------------------------------
𝓔𝓝𝓖𝓛:
If you want perfect crime book-this ain't it. But if you want drama with the sensitive topic, then this is a book for you. The writer did a fantastic job writing this book on the ay that you can't hate or love characters. Despite this heavy topic, this is not a heavy book to read. Language is simple and the storyline is clear. It's a book with a message-a good message. Flaws- the way mystery about the murder was solved was way too fast if you ask me. I also failed to feel what I read and that is very important to me. I loved the ending though. Overall if you want to read this book you have a green light. It's totally worth it.
Postoje dve teme koje aktivno izbegavam svaki put kada čitam: prva su ratni logori i mučenja, druga je maloletna delikvencija. Ipak kada sam birala četri knjige sa jedne od akcija prijatelj kome apsolutno verujem, Kaća, mi je rekla da uzmem knjigu bez obzira na tešku tematiku. Znala sam da što pre moram da prođem kroz ovu knjigu, moja logika je uvek bila ista-ono od čega bežiš je ono sa čim prvo treba da se suočiš. Bila sam iznenađena naracijom autora, očekivala sam težu i negde depresivniju naraciju, međutim sposobnost autora da prikaže početak novog života pod novim identitetom i sama ideja da život zaista teče dalje i da se svi mi uigramo u rutinu života je fantastična. Naracija iz prošlosti ima drugačiji ton a opet zadržava gotovo identičnu emociju. Priče dečaka A i dečaka B nisu preterano tragične i veoma je jasno da sam autor ne želi da se mi, kao čitaoci, poistovetimo ili saosećamo sa njima. Dopada mi se što krivica nije smeštena ni na jednu stranu. Jednostavno ona je prisutna kao činjenica, zato ne možeš da žališ jednog od dečaka a opet sa druge strane možeš da podržavaš Džekov novi život. Još jedna pozitivna stvar je što autor prikazuje koliko pozitivan uticaj stvara pozitivan život i koliko negativan uticaj radi potpuno suprotno. Autor koristi jednostavan, gradski jezik, pa je knjiga veoma "lagana" za čitanje i razumevanje. Šta mi se nije dopalo? Nisam mogla da osetim ovu knjigu, nikako. Ono što meni izdvaja dobru od fantastične knjige je sposobnost osećanja onoga što sam čitala ovde toga jednostavno nema. Takođe mogu da kažem da mi je celo razrešenje događaja bilo malo ubrzano i negde napisano samo da bi postojalo tu, ali to je samo moje mišljenje. Kraj je ipak bio fantastičan. Sve u svemu ako želite da pročitate ovu knjgigu ja mogu da vam dam zeleno svetlo. Vredi.
------------------------------------------------
𝓔𝓝𝓖𝓛:
If you want perfect crime book-this ain't it. But if you want drama with the sensitive topic, then this is a book for you. The writer did a fantastic job writing this book on the ay that you can't hate or love characters. Despite this heavy topic, this is not a heavy book to read. Language is simple and the storyline is clear. It's a book with a message-a good message. Flaws- the way mystery about the murder was solved was way too fast if you ask me. I also failed to feel what I read and that is very important to me. I loved the ending though. Overall if you want to read this book you have a green light. It's totally worth it.
June 3, 2024
Parcialmente inspirado en el caso real del secuestro, tortura y asesinato de un niño de 3 años a manos de dos niños de 10 años, sucedido en Reino Unido en 1993, este libro me atraía porque aquel suceso fue desconcertante. ¿Cómo es posible que dos niños sean capaces de tanta crueldad? ¿Estamos sencillamente ante una expresión pura del mal? ¿Se puede siquiera llamar malvado a un niño, haga lo que haga?
La crueldad de estos dos niños pone en suspenso muchos de las convicciones que rigen nuestro concepto de responsabilidad, no solo moral sino jurídico-penal, la idea de la culpa, y de la autonomía individual, por cuanto se puede explicar/justificar por la vida que hemos tenido.
Normalmente rehúyo de los libros donde se muestra sin más la crudeza y la bajeza. Pero en este caso me llamó mucho la atención la posibilidad de explorar los conceptos de culpa y redención. ¿Es posible que un niño de 10 sea culpable? Está claro que los actos que cometieron son despreciables, pero ¿se le puede pedir responsabilidad a unos niños? ¿Es posible que entendieran la magnitud de lo que hacían? ¿Lo entendieron luego? Y lo que más me interesaba, ¿Tienen derecho a redimirse? ¿Deben cargar toda la vida con la culpa y la losa de lo que hicieron, o pueden rehacer sus vidas? ¿Es posible perdonarse uno mismo después de algo semejante?
El autor, sin entrar en reflexiones explícitas sobre estos conceptos, va narrando la vida de uno de los asesinos, el Niño A, apodo que le pone el sistema de justicia británico para evitar que le reconozcan. Mezcla distintos episodios de su vida, su ciudad natal, sus padres, sus alegrías y sus decepciones, del Niño B…y consigue algo difícil: consigue que empatices con él, ponerte en su lugar. Acabas sufriendo con él cuando la prensa le acosa, y entiendes su dolor. No intenta justificar lo que hizo mediante los traumas que sufrió de niño, pero a través de una serie de retazos de su vida te dibuja el semblante de alguien que merece tu compasión, y que no se explica, no se define únicamente por un solo hecho, por atroz e incomprensible que fuera.
La crueldad de estos dos niños pone en suspenso muchos de las convicciones que rigen nuestro concepto de responsabilidad, no solo moral sino jurídico-penal, la idea de la culpa, y de la autonomía individual, por cuanto se puede explicar/justificar por la vida que hemos tenido.
Normalmente rehúyo de los libros donde se muestra sin más la crudeza y la bajeza. Pero en este caso me llamó mucho la atención la posibilidad de explorar los conceptos de culpa y redención. ¿Es posible que un niño de 10 sea culpable? Está claro que los actos que cometieron son despreciables, pero ¿se le puede pedir responsabilidad a unos niños? ¿Es posible que entendieran la magnitud de lo que hacían? ¿Lo entendieron luego? Y lo que más me interesaba, ¿Tienen derecho a redimirse? ¿Deben cargar toda la vida con la culpa y la losa de lo que hicieron, o pueden rehacer sus vidas? ¿Es posible perdonarse uno mismo después de algo semejante?
El autor, sin entrar en reflexiones explícitas sobre estos conceptos, va narrando la vida de uno de los asesinos, el Niño A, apodo que le pone el sistema de justicia británico para evitar que le reconozcan. Mezcla distintos episodios de su vida, su ciudad natal, sus padres, sus alegrías y sus decepciones, del Niño B…y consigue algo difícil: consigue que empatices con él, ponerte en su lugar. Acabas sufriendo con él cuando la prensa le acosa, y entiendes su dolor. No intenta justificar lo que hizo mediante los traumas que sufrió de niño, pero a través de una serie de retazos de su vida te dibuja el semblante de alguien que merece tu compasión, y que no se explica, no se define únicamente por un solo hecho, por atroz e incomprensible que fuera.
October 24, 2022
Este libro da para abrir un buen melón, ¿todo el mundo merece una segunda oportunidad? ¿Más todavía si es un pecado de la infancia? ¿Aunque sea un acto terrible y casi imposible de perdonar?
Reconozco que el autor ha sabido tocarme el corazón y me ha montado en una montaña rusa de emociones. Hay capítulos muy tristes, muy decadentes y, por otra parte, hay otros esperanzadores y llenos de pura ilusión. Al final estás viendo el cambio progresivo de un niño a adulto que no sabe nada, que lo pierde todo y que ha cometido un acto atroz. La figura de Terry, la única persona que se preocupa por él, me parece muy interesante ya que puede olvidar al monstruo para construir a un adulto funcional que debe introducirse en el mundo real y no despeñarse en el intento. Si no fuera por esa clase de gente, que puede ver más allá del horror, sería muy difícil recuperar cierta humanidad en esas personas que actúan de manera despreciable.
Si lo pienso fríamente, no sé si podría perdonar algo así de alguien de mi alrededor. Ni si podría aceptar su amistad si lo conociera luego, el miedo sería demasiado fuerte. Es realmente complicado aceptar que alguien pueda cambiar a tal grado y que merece una nueva vida. Pero, ¿quién soy yo para decidir si la merece o no? Jack me ha convencido de que sí la merecía ya que lo he conocido espiándolo por una rendija, no por conocerlo personalmente.
Este libro da para abrir un buen melón, si señor.
Reconozco que el autor ha sabido tocarme el corazón y me ha montado en una montaña rusa de emociones. Hay capítulos muy tristes, muy decadentes y, por otra parte, hay otros esperanzadores y llenos de pura ilusión. Al final estás viendo el cambio progresivo de un niño a adulto que no sabe nada, que lo pierde todo y que ha cometido un acto atroz. La figura de Terry, la única persona que se preocupa por él, me parece muy interesante ya que puede olvidar al monstruo para construir a un adulto funcional que debe introducirse en el mundo real y no despeñarse en el intento. Si no fuera por esa clase de gente, que puede ver más allá del horror, sería muy difícil recuperar cierta humanidad en esas personas que actúan de manera despreciable.
Si lo pienso fríamente, no sé si podría perdonar algo así de alguien de mi alrededor. Ni si podría aceptar su amistad si lo conociera luego, el miedo sería demasiado fuerte. Es realmente complicado aceptar que alguien pueda cambiar a tal grado y que merece una nueva vida. Pero, ¿quién soy yo para decidir si la merece o no? Jack me ha convencido de que sí la merecía ya que lo he conocido espiándolo por una rendija, no por conocerlo personalmente.
Este libro da para abrir un buen melón, si señor.
January 21, 2014
What a book! A heart rending story of a young man released from prison after a horrendous crime (did he do it or not?) and how he copes with life outside. The way the book is written - with sections set in the past - made sure the reader gradually became aware of Jack's past and the actual crime. I liked the background info, I like the labelling of the chapters, I liked the different points of view. I did feel though that Jack had a voice beyond his years. Yes, his manner was of a boy who'd only just come into the world from prison but he seemed older in his thought processes, but it's a minor point. I couldn't put it down. I was desperate to know what happened to him.
The book seems to be based on the Bulger case in the UK, though the victim in this story was female and ten years old, but the boys themselves did seem similar. Though not completely! I liked Jack. I wanted him to succeed in his new life and I thought the writer did an excellent job of showing us the sort of problems that he'd have.
The book seems to be based on the Bulger case in the UK, though the victim in this story was female and ten years old, but the boys themselves did seem similar. Though not completely! I liked Jack. I wanted him to succeed in his new life and I thought the writer did an excellent job of showing us the sort of problems that he'd have.
July 2, 2017
may be the best book i have read, no not overreacting -- at the least the best in a long, long time -- first the style, simple direct writing, no overdramatizing, gratuitous vocabulary, overdescription -- not trying to impress anybody with ornate language -- just a sad, so sad, story to tell and tells it and makes you feel it -- just short to the point jabs that all land -- some british jargon and references that knowledge of certainly would have enhanced, but these didnt take away from the effect -- really, i have never had my heart broken so much by a book -- not to mention so early and often -- havent seen the film yet but plan to shortly, though i can't imagine it matching this -- read this book
October 10, 2009
I seem to be the only person who really didn't like this book. There were so many technical problems and other instances of "bad writing" that it seems like no one edited it. For example, the author changed his point of view too often, putting us in the minds of unnecessary characters (like Elizabeth, the psychologist) and not enough in Jack's mind for me to get very involved in his story. The book is full of cliches and metaphors that are unbelievable coming from someone who's spent his whole life in prison. Jack's story was not compelling or believable, nor did it make me think about the topics it intended me to, like parenting, prison, etc.
February 20, 2019
Didn't like it. I didn't hate it either. It just left me a little cold, and considering the heavy subject, I thought it to be frustrating.
It reads well. It's a short book and the flow works nicely, even if it's very one-note.
Everyone involved in the case at hand gets at least one chapter, and I question that everyone needed one. The dad, ok, but the doctor lady? Not really. It just pulled you out of the story.
I found it naive, as well, in its emotions.
Meh.
It reads well. It's a short book and the flow works nicely, even if it's very one-note.
Everyone involved in the case at hand gets at least one chapter, and I question that everyone needed one. The dad, ok, but the doctor lady? Not really. It just pulled you out of the story.
I found it naive, as well, in its emotions.
Meh.
August 26, 2019
Maybe I would’ve rated this higher if it wouldn’t be the story that is currently written, if it would’ve be more about Boys A and B when they were children, before the “incident”, and if that period wasn’t written so clinical and devoid of all emotions. Just maybe. But as it is - 2 indifferent stars.
July 23, 2022
beautifully written and fucking sad
Read
May 3, 2023Malo je ironično što sam ovu knjigu, sasvim slučajno započetu pre nekoliko dana, završio baš danas.
„Dečak A“ britanskog autora Džonatana Trigela je priča o dečaku koji je, odbačen od svih, učinio grozan zločin. Zločin toliko užasan da su svi, iako je imao tek dvanaest godina, želeli da ga ubiju. Zločin toliko strašan da je čak i u zatvoru morao da bude skriven iza izmišljenih zlodela i lažnih imena. Zločin toliko užasno neoprostiv da je čak i nakon izlaska iz zatvora skrivanje moralo da bude nastavljeno. Niko nije smeo da otkrije ko se krije iza njegovog lažnog imena i izmišljene prošlosti. Neko je čak obećao i nagradu od 30.000 dolara za otkrivanje njegovog lažnog identiteta.
I dok Džek polako upoznaje svet van zatvorskih rešetaka i većinu stvari, poput izlaska na pivo ili poljupca, radi po prvi put u životu, čitaoci polako počinju da otkrivaju njegovu prošlost.
Šta se to dogodilo te su dva maltretirana i zlostavljana dečaka postali sinonim za zlo? Kako su dva dvanaestogodišnjaka postali monstrumi? Da li se čudovišta rađaju ili ih stvaraju okolnosti?
Knjiga postavlja mnoga pitanja, a možda je najstrašnije ono koje sebi postavlja otac Dečaka A: da li bi možda bolje bilo da je njegov sin bio žrtva?
Na osnovu ove knjige snimljen je i film koji je dobio brojne nagrade na festivalima.
„Dečak A“ je zanatski vešto napisana priča, koja nam iznova nudi i razrađuje onu čuvenu frazu filozofkinje Hane Arent o banalnosti zla.
„Krajnja zloba, patologija ili ideološko ubeđenje nisu nužni kako bi pomogli pojedincu da počini beskrajno zlo“, rekla je Arent.
„Dečak A“ britanskog autora Džonatana Trigela je priča o dečaku koji je, odbačen od svih, učinio grozan zločin. Zločin toliko užasan da su svi, iako je imao tek dvanaest godina, želeli da ga ubiju. Zločin toliko strašan da je čak i u zatvoru morao da bude skriven iza izmišljenih zlodela i lažnih imena. Zločin toliko užasno neoprostiv da je čak i nakon izlaska iz zatvora skrivanje moralo da bude nastavljeno. Niko nije smeo da otkrije ko se krije iza njegovog lažnog imena i izmišljene prošlosti. Neko je čak obećao i nagradu od 30.000 dolara za otkrivanje njegovog lažnog identiteta.
I dok Džek polako upoznaje svet van zatvorskih rešetaka i većinu stvari, poput izlaska na pivo ili poljupca, radi po prvi put u životu, čitaoci polako počinju da otkrivaju njegovu prošlost.
Šta se to dogodilo te su dva maltretirana i zlostavljana dečaka postali sinonim za zlo? Kako su dva dvanaestogodišnjaka postali monstrumi? Da li se čudovišta rađaju ili ih stvaraju okolnosti?
Knjiga postavlja mnoga pitanja, a možda je najstrašnije ono koje sebi postavlja otac Dečaka A: da li bi možda bolje bilo da je njegov sin bio žrtva?
Na osnovu ove knjige snimljen je i film koji je dobio brojne nagrade na festivalima.
„Dečak A“ je zanatski vešto napisana priča, koja nam iznova nudi i razrađuje onu čuvenu frazu filozofkinje Hane Arent o banalnosti zla.
„Krajnja zloba, patologija ili ideološko ubeđenje nisu nužni kako bi pomogli pojedincu da počini beskrajno zlo“, rekla je Arent.
November 11, 2024
Best interessant maar er waren soms saaie stukken waar je doorheen moest. Sommige karakters waren zinloos maar het verhaal in zn algemeen was wel interessant😂
Sommige karakters en verhaallijnen voelden onafgemaakt
Sommige karakters en verhaallijnen voelden onafgemaakt
January 2, 2024
Need to reflect on this before rating
July 30, 2018
Edit: dodata ocena.
Sve je i dalje sveže, pa neću procenjivati koliko zvezdica nosi. Kako uopšte oceniti ovo?
Ovo je knjiga koja nikog neće ostaviti ravnodušnim i o kojoj se može polemisati u nedgoled. Nikakav stilski doprinos, pisana prilično realno i sirovo. Činjenica da ima sličnosti s istinitim događajem od pre 25 godina meni ju je učinila težom.
Odličan pogled na društvo, metode odgajanja i vaspitanja i njihov uticaj na decu, pogled na pritisak medija i vlasti. I dalje sam pod utiskom, a verujem da ću dugo i biti.
"To su trenuci koji menjaju čovekov pogled na svet; mali trenuci koji otkrivaju šta se krije u drugima. Nekoliko puta je takve trenutke doživeo sa samim sobom, kada je pio. U pijanim sećanjima na polovične i napola zapamćene istine koje naizgled menjaju sve."
Sve je i dalje sveže, pa neću procenjivati koliko zvezdica nosi. Kako uopšte oceniti ovo?
Ovo je knjiga koja nikog neće ostaviti ravnodušnim i o kojoj se može polemisati u nedgoled. Nikakav stilski doprinos, pisana prilično realno i sirovo. Činjenica da ima sličnosti s istinitim događajem od pre 25 godina meni ju je učinila težom.
Odličan pogled na društvo, metode odgajanja i vaspitanja i njihov uticaj na decu, pogled na pritisak medija i vlasti. I dalje sam pod utiskom, a verujem da ću dugo i biti.
"To su trenuci koji menjaju čovekov pogled na svet; mali trenuci koji otkrivaju šta se krije u drugima. Nekoliko puta je takve trenutke doživeo sa samim sobom, kada je pio. U pijanim sećanjima na polovične i napola zapamćene istine koje naizgled menjaju sve."
August 28, 2023
Non una lettura da scegliere se si vuole passare qualche ora di spensierata evasione .
Jack ha commesso un terribile crimine da bambino , dopo anni ha scontato la sua colpa ed è pronto per cominciare a vivere ma la società glielo permetterà ?
Incentrato sul punto di vista , sui sogni , sulle speranze e sulle paure del “mostro” (?)
La questione è : Le persone hanno diritto a una seconda opportunità ?
Consigliato
Jack ha commesso un terribile crimine da bambino , dopo anni ha scontato la sua colpa ed è pronto per cominciare a vivere ma la società glielo permetterà ?
Incentrato sul punto di vista , sui sogni , sulle speranze e sulle paure del “mostro” (?)
La questione è : Le persone hanno diritto a una seconda opportunità ?
Consigliato
June 16, 2015
"Given the challenging subject matter, Boy A is a surprisingly easy book to read. Jonathan Trigell's prose is literary, poetic in places, always compelling and never obstructive. Jack, the Boy A of the title, is the central figure of the book but throughout its 26 chapters, Trigell explores the lives of the people around him, from those who helped shape him into the man he is at the novel's beginning, and those he meets during his new life outside prison. Jack is an immensely sympathetic character, brutalised and occasionally brutal but the reader has no doubt that he has been fully rehabilitated; that the crime which landed him in juvenile detention was an aberration, the product of a particular set of circumstances rather than something 'evil' inside him.
Though Jack makes friends and finds a girlfriend he cannot escape the truth of his hidden past, nor the reality that many people, urged on by the tabloid press, want nothing more than to see him back in prison for the rest of his life. The themes of justice and forgiveness runs strongly through the novel, and we wonder whether either is truly possible in this case. The two boys are irredeemable monsters, or so the papers say, because to admit the possibility of rehabilitation is to admit that any child could potentially become a murderer.
Boy A is a very powerful, moving novel. I read it in one evening, but I know that I will be pondering the issues it raises for a long time to come."
Though Jack makes friends and finds a girlfriend he cannot escape the truth of his hidden past, nor the reality that many people, urged on by the tabloid press, want nothing more than to see him back in prison for the rest of his life. The themes of justice and forgiveness runs strongly through the novel, and we wonder whether either is truly possible in this case. The two boys are irredeemable monsters, or so the papers say, because to admit the possibility of rehabilitation is to admit that any child could potentially become a murderer.
Boy A is a very powerful, moving novel. I read it in one evening, but I know that I will be pondering the issues it raises for a long time to come."
December 19, 2016
A sorrowful tale of how tragically things can go wrong when young people are neglected, abused,abandoned and generally treated badly. I saw the film years ago and Andrew Garfield's mumbling, frightened performance absolutely nailed it. There is a sense of dread throughout the novel regardless of what is happening (as there is in the film) and I was constantly waiting for bad things to happen. The reasons why people turn out bad, choose a particular course of action and whether or not they can be redeemed is, and always will be, open to question. Boy A is a book that will make you think and feel. It might not be technically perfect but I have given it the best rating I can based on it as a whole, for the way it dragged me in and beat me up. Like the film, it will stay with me for a long time.
December 7, 2015
This book is so well written! The first hundred pages or so were quite boring and the story wasn't really clear, but after that it all came together and there's so much more to this than you would think by hust reading the description.
The thing is that it was sometimes hard not to like Jack, and that's just so weird because he's been in prison and a girl is dead but still you feel for him. It was sometimes a bit hard to understand because of flashbacks and point of view swaps but that had a charm too.
The thing is that it was sometimes hard not to like Jack, and that's just so weird because he's been in prison and a girl is dead but still you feel for him. It was sometimes a bit hard to understand because of flashbacks and point of view swaps but that had a charm too.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 18, 2024
I'm giving this book a generous two stars for the author at least being brave enough to tackle a very distressing and controversial subject. It would be very easy to write children who murder others off as irrevocably evil, and I appreciate the fact that the author is willing to go up against these assumptions. This is what fiction is for: exploring the places that most people never think to look.
That being said, I found it a very manipulative and exploitative piece of work.
I have no issue with writing about child killers. It's an area that I myself am incredibly interested in, which is why I was so eager to read this book. I do have an issue when this fictional crime has such an obvious parallel to a real-life case which still haunts the victim's family, and the rest of the country, to this day.
To quickly summarize for anyone outside of the UK: in the 1990s, a two-year-old toddler named James Bulger was snatched off the street by two 10-year-old boys, named Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. Venables and Thompson proceeded to torture Bulger. I am not an easily shocked person, and have read enough crime to be able to very easily speak about most crimes. The way these boys tortured James is frankly unspeakable for me to put in a public review. When they had finished torturing James, they tied him to a railway track. They did this under the belief that when James was finally found, people would assume he was hit by a train instead of murdered. Possibly the only 'good' part about what happened is that James died before the train hit him and severed him in two. He did not have to suffer that. But he was still alive during the torture, and he was still alive to be tied to the traintrack. He had so many injuries that coroners could not tell which one actually killed him.
This case has, like I said, haunted the UK. It continues to do so even now. Even mentioning James's name will bring about a torrent of emotion from everybody in the UK. Some people are still so furious with Venables and Thompson that they think they should have been locked up for the rest of their lives. Other people find it so distressing that two 10-year-olds would do this, and find the idea of punishing two children with jail time so upsetting, that they will search and search for answers that simply do not exist.
I am a mixture of the two. I think Venables and Thompson clearly had very severe mental illnesses. Thompson at the very least had a very bad, probably abusive, home life and had learnt from his siblings how to be violent. Had the boys not met each other, I doubt they would have hurt anyone in the way they did-or at least, not at the tender age of 10 years old. I think they were two incredibly ill boys who spiralled into something uncontrollable when they banded together. Note that I believe they were incredibly ill, not evil. In my opinion a 10-year-old cannot be evil. Horrible, sadistic, cruel, yes-but I think a 10-year-old is too young to be considered evil. Although I can understand it, I do not agree with the lynch mob that was after these boys at the time of their arrest and think the weight of the public's fury probably did not help the boys with how to recover from their sadistic mindsets. I do not think someone should be judged on what they did at 10 years old.
But they were not innocent boys, they were not victims of their own crime, they did not make a 'mistake'. I don't think their anonymity should have been lifted when they were 10-like I said, that is too young to bear the brunt of an entire country's rage-but I think that when they turned 18, the public had the right to know who they were. I would be okay if, like all criminals, they had the chance for parole and freedom once they had served their time in an adult prison. As it was, they served only 8 years in a juvenile detention center that apparently gave them lots of cool stuff and electronics that children outside of prison could only dream of. That was not long enough for justice to be done for James. I do not agree with sending a 10 year old to jail, of course not. But when you turn 18, if you are truly remorseful, you would be willing to accept time in adult prison in order to serve the 'punishment' stage of your rehabilitation. This did not happen to Venables and Thompson, and is a cause of great pain and anguish for James's family.
So, as you can see, James Bulger's murder was, and still is, a massive point of concern. Even today the country is still contending with how we should deal with children who kill.
I do not think portraying them as innocent sweethearts is how we should deal with them. Unfortunately, this is what Trigell does with the character of Jack, a young man who has just finished a jail sentence for murdering another girl when he was 10.
Let this be clear: I do not have anything against Jack. I was pleased to see Trigell explore the parts of his personality that aren't connected to the murder, and I was happy to see that Trigell pushed the message that (some) child criminals can change if given the right support, care, and love. But I was greatly disappointed with how Jack was represented as ever naive, sweet, confused, affectionate, brave. And don't get me wrong, I'm sure Jack, along with some other child criminals, are all those things. But ONLY those things? No. Jack was a seriously disturbed boy who murdered someone. There is no way he is going to come out of prison completely dispelled of any maliciousness or cruelty. Something in Jack's personality made him kill that girl, and that personality is not going to go away. Jack can choose to do good deeds and become a better person, and I absolutely support that. But Trigell depicts him like a lost puppy in a human's costume, all wagging tails and big eyes and looking for love. Jack, the girl he murdered, and child criminals and their victims everywhere...they all deserved a deeper, more compelling dive into his mindset and personality. The portrayal Trigell offers up is one-note, one-dimensional, and clearly meant to manipulate the reader into rooting for Jack. Jack killed someone. They don't have to root for him. But as it is, Jack is so perfectly sweet and kind and innocent that readers have no choice but to want to care for him. The author never gives them the chance to do otherwise.
Angela, the girl Jack murdered, is depicted as ever-sweet, ever-perfect, ever-beautiful. Much is made of her wonderful appearance and personality in the newspapers and TV programmes. Again, I can understand why Trigell did this. Of course Angela is not as perfect as the media claims. For one, she's a human being with flaws just like the rest of us, and for two, she's a 10-year-old who would still be predisposed to tantrums and playground teasing. But when Trigell finally offers us a taste of the real Angela, the real girl behind the glossy photographs and beautiful obituaries, it's honestly like a slap in the face. I couldn't quite believe what I was reading. The only true scene we get of Angela is in a flashback to just before she was murdered, and she is depicted as spoilt, rude, short-tempered, bullying, and with a tongue that could make even sailors turn pale. Just before she is killed, Angela lets rip on Jack, absolutely battering him with her words.
This is the only depiction we get of the true Angela. Trigell wanted to show us that famous murder victims are not perfect, sure, that's fine, I can get behind that. But to suggest that the 'true' personality of this little girl was completely devoid of any kindness and empathy? To suggest that being mean to two boys whom the entire town were already suspicious of somehow tarnishes the beauty of her media photographs and obituaries? Angela's last words we see in the book are full of vile and hatred towards Jack, whom, as I have already discussed, we are forced into seeing as ever gentle and kind and undeserving of what he has been through. Bear in mind that at this point, Angela has been dragged into an underground tunnel and threatened with a knife. She, very understandably, starts taunting the boys with how she's going to tell everyone what they've just done to her. This is not the action of a spoilt, horrible little brat: this is the action of a child who is quite literally having her life threatened and is acting big and tough to try and scare her attackers away. Was this scene meant to change our opinion of Angela? Was this scene meant to make us look at her, a 10-year-old murder victim, in a different light? Because it didn't. I just felt sorrier for her than ever. It felt like she was being judged by the very author she was being tortured by.
I could not shake the feeling that Trigell was casting Angela in such a harsh light because she was a girl. Jack and his friend have tortured and murdered someone, but Jack had a hard time in prison and is having a hard time forgiving himself and just wants to forget it ever happened, and hey, did I mention, Jack is a boy? A little girl is cruel to the boys following and threatening her and suddenly it's meant to make readers question if she was so perfect and beautiful in the first place. When Trigell spends an entire book forcing us to sympathise with a convicted murderer, and then one scene attempting to make us cast judgment on a tortured little girl, then yes, I am suspicious as hell of that.
Not to mention-did you know a character in this book considered raping his wife? Yes, Terry, Jack's key worker, depicted as a kind and wise mentor to his apprentice. Now, Terry is not meant to be looked at as a perfect man, I know that, he has many flaws and neglects his family in favour of his work. But Jesus Christ: Trigell just pops in there that, when he learnt his wife had cheated on him, Terry considered dragging her to bed and raping her, just to show her that he could still be intimate with her even when she had turned to other men. And in the book this is called exactly what it is: rape. Now, luckily Terry did not rape his wife, and is instead looking back on the moment considering if he was a bad person for even thinking about it, or if he was in fact a good person for denying the urge to harm someone. Trigell offers this up as a big hm-hm thinking moment designed to make us question ourselves and our own values. No, sorry Trigell, sorry Terry, wanting to rape your wife is evidence that you are a sexist, misogynistic, selfish person who needs to stay away from women until you've got those urges sorted out. Normal people do not have to hold themselves back from raping someone. Normal people especially do not look back on that moment and think of ways it was actually proof of them being an innately good person. If Terry had been cringing with remorse and shame during this moment, maybe I would have been willing to accept it as something he's learnt from, but nope. Terry just considers the moment for a paragraph and then moves on with his day. I was deeply, deeply disturbed that Trigell would not only write about rape in such a dismissive way, as though it was as simple a mistake as accidentally ordering food you know your wife's allergic to, but that he had the gall to suggest not raping someone is something to be celebrated and praised. Terry was a misogynistic sod regardless of whether he actually raped his wife or not. The point is he really fucking wanted to.
And now I would like to move back onto James Bulger. What upset me most about this book was how clearly the story copies what happened in real-life. The identity of the victim is different: James was a 2-year-old boy, Angela was a 10-year-old girl, and the ways in which the victims were murdered are different. I suspect Trigell changed this aspect because to parallel the ways James was tortured and murdered would make it far too obvious that he was using the little boy as inspiration for a fictional book. But, quite literally, everything else about the cases are the same.
-Venables and Thompson were two already troubled boys who became friends and worked together to murder someone. Jack and the other murderer, known only as B, were exactly the same.
-Venables and Thompson would move between denying the murder and blaming it on each other. Same with Jack and B.
-Venables and Thompson were initially known to the public as Child A and Child B. Guess what Jack and B are known as in the flashback sections of the book? I was actually willing to let this one go, figuring that courts probably always go in alphabetical order and name anonymous defendants A, B, C, and so on. Nope. In the recent case of the torture and murder of Angela Wrightson, the 13 and 14-year-old murderers were called Girl D and Girl F. Trigell could have picked any other alphabetical letters he wanted, but he chose the same identities that were used to name Venables and Thompson.
-The public were rightfully furious at Venables and Thompson. Many people took it to, what was in my opinion, child abuse by yelling that they should be hanged and physically attacking the van they were being transported in. I was horrified when the exact same van scene occurred with Jack and B. It was then that I realized 'Boy A' is not only taking inspiration from James Bulger's murder, but directly copying it.
-The media raked Venables and Thompson over the coals, calling them evil monsters. Again, in my opinion, I believe this is child abuse and that there was no reason for anyone other than James's family to express such vicious hatred towards two children. However, I can understand the reasoning and emotions behind it and would not consider anyone who detests Venables and Thompson a bad person for it. The media also rakes Jack and B over the coals using much the same language.
I was initially more than willing, even excited, to dive into an exploration of how branding children who kill as evil can affect their mental health and destroy their chances of becoming better people. But I was not in the mood to read something that was very clearly just begging for readers to view Venables and Thompson in the same way they viewed exceptionally sweet, one-dimensional Jack. A reader may very well come out of 'Boy A' expecting Venables and Thompson to be just as misunderstood and permanently innocent as Jack. They aren't. They were very disturbed and complicated children, and paralleling Jack to them is just an absolute disgrace.
Trigell has apparently denied that 'Boy A' is based on the James Bulger case. I do not believe him. I hope that James Bulger's family have not been hurt by a book that steals plot devices from their little boy's murder in order to show sympathy to his killers. Of course it is okay if the James Bulger case sparked in Trigell an interest in children who kill. Of course it is. But at least have the decency to come up with your own goddamn tragedy.
Edit: I stand by much of what I said in this review. However, I also like to be fair, and so I will acknowledge that whilst I still disbelieve the author when he says the book wasn't inspired by James Bulger's murder, I also think I was harsh on him regarding the similarities. I referenced the murder of Angela Wrightson in this review, and since then in the UK, there has also been the murder of Brianna Ghey--again by two children (teens this time).
It seems relatively clear to me that children teaming together to commit a murder seems to be the way it pans out, and that makes sense. A child committing murder is such a horrific thing that it does, actually, make sense that they mainly seem to do so once they have another child to encourage them on. Additionally, again with Brianna Ghey's murder, the killers blamed each other--which is in actuality a very immature and childish thing to do. In this vein I think it is impossible to *avoid* similarities to James Bulger's murder, since kids committing murder and then blaming each other seems to just follow a certain set of 'rules' in general (for lack of a better word).
So, I have changed my mind on that part of the review: the murder was similar to James Bulger's because that seems to be the way children commit these crimes in the first place.
I stand by other parts of my review: that the author doesn't handle the victim well, nor does he delve into the complexities of Jack's personality, and that I am deeply concerned by the misogyny.
That being said, I found it a very manipulative and exploitative piece of work.
I have no issue with writing about child killers. It's an area that I myself am incredibly interested in, which is why I was so eager to read this book. I do have an issue when this fictional crime has such an obvious parallel to a real-life case which still haunts the victim's family, and the rest of the country, to this day.
To quickly summarize for anyone outside of the UK: in the 1990s, a two-year-old toddler named James Bulger was snatched off the street by two 10-year-old boys, named Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. Venables and Thompson proceeded to torture Bulger. I am not an easily shocked person, and have read enough crime to be able to very easily speak about most crimes. The way these boys tortured James is frankly unspeakable for me to put in a public review. When they had finished torturing James, they tied him to a railway track. They did this under the belief that when James was finally found, people would assume he was hit by a train instead of murdered. Possibly the only 'good' part about what happened is that James died before the train hit him and severed him in two. He did not have to suffer that. But he was still alive during the torture, and he was still alive to be tied to the traintrack. He had so many injuries that coroners could not tell which one actually killed him.
This case has, like I said, haunted the UK. It continues to do so even now. Even mentioning James's name will bring about a torrent of emotion from everybody in the UK. Some people are still so furious with Venables and Thompson that they think they should have been locked up for the rest of their lives. Other people find it so distressing that two 10-year-olds would do this, and find the idea of punishing two children with jail time so upsetting, that they will search and search for answers that simply do not exist.
I am a mixture of the two. I think Venables and Thompson clearly had very severe mental illnesses. Thompson at the very least had a very bad, probably abusive, home life and had learnt from his siblings how to be violent. Had the boys not met each other, I doubt they would have hurt anyone in the way they did-or at least, not at the tender age of 10 years old. I think they were two incredibly ill boys who spiralled into something uncontrollable when they banded together. Note that I believe they were incredibly ill, not evil. In my opinion a 10-year-old cannot be evil. Horrible, sadistic, cruel, yes-but I think a 10-year-old is too young to be considered evil. Although I can understand it, I do not agree with the lynch mob that was after these boys at the time of their arrest and think the weight of the public's fury probably did not help the boys with how to recover from their sadistic mindsets. I do not think someone should be judged on what they did at 10 years old.
But they were not innocent boys, they were not victims of their own crime, they did not make a 'mistake'. I don't think their anonymity should have been lifted when they were 10-like I said, that is too young to bear the brunt of an entire country's rage-but I think that when they turned 18, the public had the right to know who they were. I would be okay if, like all criminals, they had the chance for parole and freedom once they had served their time in an adult prison. As it was, they served only 8 years in a juvenile detention center that apparently gave them lots of cool stuff and electronics that children outside of prison could only dream of. That was not long enough for justice to be done for James. I do not agree with sending a 10 year old to jail, of course not. But when you turn 18, if you are truly remorseful, you would be willing to accept time in adult prison in order to serve the 'punishment' stage of your rehabilitation. This did not happen to Venables and Thompson, and is a cause of great pain and anguish for James's family.
So, as you can see, James Bulger's murder was, and still is, a massive point of concern. Even today the country is still contending with how we should deal with children who kill.
I do not think portraying them as innocent sweethearts is how we should deal with them. Unfortunately, this is what Trigell does with the character of Jack, a young man who has just finished a jail sentence for murdering another girl when he was 10.
Let this be clear: I do not have anything against Jack. I was pleased to see Trigell explore the parts of his personality that aren't connected to the murder, and I was happy to see that Trigell pushed the message that (some) child criminals can change if given the right support, care, and love. But I was greatly disappointed with how Jack was represented as ever naive, sweet, confused, affectionate, brave. And don't get me wrong, I'm sure Jack, along with some other child criminals, are all those things. But ONLY those things? No. Jack was a seriously disturbed boy who murdered someone. There is no way he is going to come out of prison completely dispelled of any maliciousness or cruelty. Something in Jack's personality made him kill that girl, and that personality is not going to go away. Jack can choose to do good deeds and become a better person, and I absolutely support that. But Trigell depicts him like a lost puppy in a human's costume, all wagging tails and big eyes and looking for love. Jack, the girl he murdered, and child criminals and their victims everywhere...they all deserved a deeper, more compelling dive into his mindset and personality. The portrayal Trigell offers up is one-note, one-dimensional, and clearly meant to manipulate the reader into rooting for Jack. Jack killed someone. They don't have to root for him. But as it is, Jack is so perfectly sweet and kind and innocent that readers have no choice but to want to care for him. The author never gives them the chance to do otherwise.
Angela, the girl Jack murdered, is depicted as ever-sweet, ever-perfect, ever-beautiful. Much is made of her wonderful appearance and personality in the newspapers and TV programmes. Again, I can understand why Trigell did this. Of course Angela is not as perfect as the media claims. For one, she's a human being with flaws just like the rest of us, and for two, she's a 10-year-old who would still be predisposed to tantrums and playground teasing. But when Trigell finally offers us a taste of the real Angela, the real girl behind the glossy photographs and beautiful obituaries, it's honestly like a slap in the face. I couldn't quite believe what I was reading. The only true scene we get of Angela is in a flashback to just before she was murdered, and she is depicted as spoilt, rude, short-tempered, bullying, and with a tongue that could make even sailors turn pale. Just before she is killed, Angela lets rip on Jack, absolutely battering him with her words.
This is the only depiction we get of the true Angela. Trigell wanted to show us that famous murder victims are not perfect, sure, that's fine, I can get behind that. But to suggest that the 'true' personality of this little girl was completely devoid of any kindness and empathy? To suggest that being mean to two boys whom the entire town were already suspicious of somehow tarnishes the beauty of her media photographs and obituaries? Angela's last words we see in the book are full of vile and hatred towards Jack, whom, as I have already discussed, we are forced into seeing as ever gentle and kind and undeserving of what he has been through. Bear in mind that at this point, Angela has been dragged into an underground tunnel and threatened with a knife. She, very understandably, starts taunting the boys with how she's going to tell everyone what they've just done to her. This is not the action of a spoilt, horrible little brat: this is the action of a child who is quite literally having her life threatened and is acting big and tough to try and scare her attackers away. Was this scene meant to change our opinion of Angela? Was this scene meant to make us look at her, a 10-year-old murder victim, in a different light? Because it didn't. I just felt sorrier for her than ever. It felt like she was being judged by the very author she was being tortured by.
I could not shake the feeling that Trigell was casting Angela in such a harsh light because she was a girl. Jack and his friend have tortured and murdered someone, but Jack had a hard time in prison and is having a hard time forgiving himself and just wants to forget it ever happened, and hey, did I mention, Jack is a boy? A little girl is cruel to the boys following and threatening her and suddenly it's meant to make readers question if she was so perfect and beautiful in the first place. When Trigell spends an entire book forcing us to sympathise with a convicted murderer, and then one scene attempting to make us cast judgment on a tortured little girl, then yes, I am suspicious as hell of that.
Not to mention-did you know a character in this book considered raping his wife? Yes, Terry, Jack's key worker, depicted as a kind and wise mentor to his apprentice. Now, Terry is not meant to be looked at as a perfect man, I know that, he has many flaws and neglects his family in favour of his work. But Jesus Christ: Trigell just pops in there that, when he learnt his wife had cheated on him, Terry considered dragging her to bed and raping her, just to show her that he could still be intimate with her even when she had turned to other men. And in the book this is called exactly what it is: rape. Now, luckily Terry did not rape his wife, and is instead looking back on the moment considering if he was a bad person for even thinking about it, or if he was in fact a good person for denying the urge to harm someone. Trigell offers this up as a big hm-hm thinking moment designed to make us question ourselves and our own values. No, sorry Trigell, sorry Terry, wanting to rape your wife is evidence that you are a sexist, misogynistic, selfish person who needs to stay away from women until you've got those urges sorted out. Normal people do not have to hold themselves back from raping someone. Normal people especially do not look back on that moment and think of ways it was actually proof of them being an innately good person. If Terry had been cringing with remorse and shame during this moment, maybe I would have been willing to accept it as something he's learnt from, but nope. Terry just considers the moment for a paragraph and then moves on with his day. I was deeply, deeply disturbed that Trigell would not only write about rape in such a dismissive way, as though it was as simple a mistake as accidentally ordering food you know your wife's allergic to, but that he had the gall to suggest not raping someone is something to be celebrated and praised. Terry was a misogynistic sod regardless of whether he actually raped his wife or not. The point is he really fucking wanted to.
And now I would like to move back onto James Bulger. What upset me most about this book was how clearly the story copies what happened in real-life. The identity of the victim is different: James was a 2-year-old boy, Angela was a 10-year-old girl, and the ways in which the victims were murdered are different. I suspect Trigell changed this aspect because to parallel the ways James was tortured and murdered would make it far too obvious that he was using the little boy as inspiration for a fictional book. But, quite literally, everything else about the cases are the same.
-Venables and Thompson were two already troubled boys who became friends and worked together to murder someone. Jack and the other murderer, known only as B, were exactly the same.
-Venables and Thompson would move between denying the murder and blaming it on each other. Same with Jack and B.
-Venables and Thompson were initially known to the public as Child A and Child B. Guess what Jack and B are known as in the flashback sections of the book? I was actually willing to let this one go, figuring that courts probably always go in alphabetical order and name anonymous defendants A, B, C, and so on. Nope. In the recent case of the torture and murder of Angela Wrightson, the 13 and 14-year-old murderers were called Girl D and Girl F. Trigell could have picked any other alphabetical letters he wanted, but he chose the same identities that were used to name Venables and Thompson.
-The public were rightfully furious at Venables and Thompson. Many people took it to, what was in my opinion, child abuse by yelling that they should be hanged and physically attacking the van they were being transported in. I was horrified when the exact same van scene occurred with Jack and B. It was then that I realized 'Boy A' is not only taking inspiration from James Bulger's murder, but directly copying it.
-The media raked Venables and Thompson over the coals, calling them evil monsters. Again, in my opinion, I believe this is child abuse and that there was no reason for anyone other than James's family to express such vicious hatred towards two children. However, I can understand the reasoning and emotions behind it and would not consider anyone who detests Venables and Thompson a bad person for it. The media also rakes Jack and B over the coals using much the same language.
I was initially more than willing, even excited, to dive into an exploration of how branding children who kill as evil can affect their mental health and destroy their chances of becoming better people. But I was not in the mood to read something that was very clearly just begging for readers to view Venables and Thompson in the same way they viewed exceptionally sweet, one-dimensional Jack. A reader may very well come out of 'Boy A' expecting Venables and Thompson to be just as misunderstood and permanently innocent as Jack. They aren't. They were very disturbed and complicated children, and paralleling Jack to them is just an absolute disgrace.
Trigell has apparently denied that 'Boy A' is based on the James Bulger case. I do not believe him. I hope that James Bulger's family have not been hurt by a book that steals plot devices from their little boy's murder in order to show sympathy to his killers. Of course it is okay if the James Bulger case sparked in Trigell an interest in children who kill. Of course it is. But at least have the decency to come up with your own goddamn tragedy.
Edit: I stand by much of what I said in this review. However, I also like to be fair, and so I will acknowledge that whilst I still disbelieve the author when he says the book wasn't inspired by James Bulger's murder, I also think I was harsh on him regarding the similarities. I referenced the murder of Angela Wrightson in this review, and since then in the UK, there has also been the murder of Brianna Ghey--again by two children (teens this time).
It seems relatively clear to me that children teaming together to commit a murder seems to be the way it pans out, and that makes sense. A child committing murder is such a horrific thing that it does, actually, make sense that they mainly seem to do so once they have another child to encourage them on. Additionally, again with Brianna Ghey's murder, the killers blamed each other--which is in actuality a very immature and childish thing to do. In this vein I think it is impossible to *avoid* similarities to James Bulger's murder, since kids committing murder and then blaming each other seems to just follow a certain set of 'rules' in general (for lack of a better word).
So, I have changed my mind on that part of the review: the murder was similar to James Bulger's because that seems to be the way children commit these crimes in the first place.
I stand by other parts of my review: that the author doesn't handle the victim well, nor does he delve into the complexities of Jack's personality, and that I am deeply concerned by the misogyny.
August 8, 2025
A se hace amigo de B, no es buena idea. Como tampoco lo es que, el primer día de vacaciones, los dos chicos dejen salir a pasear el monstruo interior que esconden. Asesinan a la pequeña Angela. Sin piedad. Con un cutter y mucha sangre. Era una princesa.
Los dos crecen en la cárcel. B no sobrevive. A, sí. Pero ahora, unos cuántos años después, ya no se llama así. Ahora es Jack y rehace su camino trabajando en un taller mecánico, enamorándose por primera vez y descubriendo el placer de una birra fría con los amigos. Pero, ¿hasta cuando podrá esconder su pasado? Inglaterra no supera que un asesino despiadado como él haga vida normal.
Basado en hechos reales, la estructura y ritmo del libro me ha seducido desde el primer capítulo. Alternando los dramáticos hechos con el presente, bailando y sufriendo, sentimos y nos angustiamos.
Los dos crecen en la cárcel. B no sobrevive. A, sí. Pero ahora, unos cuántos años después, ya no se llama así. Ahora es Jack y rehace su camino trabajando en un taller mecánico, enamorándose por primera vez y descubriendo el placer de una birra fría con los amigos. Pero, ¿hasta cuando podrá esconder su pasado? Inglaterra no supera que un asesino despiadado como él haga vida normal.
Basado en hechos reales, la estructura y ritmo del libro me ha seducido desde el primer capítulo. Alternando los dramáticos hechos con el presente, bailando y sufriendo, sentimos y nos angustiamos.
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