The Jersey Shore

by William Mayne

While spending the summer on the Jersey shore, a young boy develops a special relationship with his grandfather, who tells him of his life in England. The English and American versions of this book have different endings.

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

William Mayne was a British writer of children's fiction. Born in Hull, he was educated at the choir school attached to Canterbury Cathedral and his memories of that time contributed to his early books. He lived most of his life in North Yorkshire.

He was described as one of the outstanding children's authors of the 20th Century by the Oxford Companion to Children's Literature, and won the Carnegie Medal in 1957 for A Grass Rope and the Guardian Award in 1993 for Low Tide. He has written more than a hundred books, and is best known for his Choir School quartet comprising A Swarm in May, Choristers' Cake, Cathedral Wednesday and Words and Music, and his Earthfasts trilogy comprising Earthfasts, Cradlefasts and Candlefasts, an unusual evocation of the King Arthur legend.

A Swarm in May was filmed by the Children's Film Unit in 1983 and a five-part television series of Earthfasts was broadcast by the BBC in 1994.

William Mayne was imprisoned for two and a half years in 2004 after admitting to charges of child sexual abuse and was placed on the British sex offenders' register. His books were largely removed from shelves, and he died in disgrace in 2010.

Reviews

[Michael Fitzgerald · Rating 2 out of 5]

I nearly gave up on this halfway through. It's just not a very understandable story, though the final chapter makes sense of some things. I didn't find much to connect with in the book - there's a boy, but he has no interactions with other young people. The older family members are inscrutable and not very likeable. And for a book called The Jersey Shore, there isn't much of the geography in evidence.