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Vermin Blond
Set in an English public school in the late 1960s, this is a tragi-comic coming-of-age novel. It shows how a psychological trauma sustained in adolescence can resonate thoughout an adult life, with profound and ruinous consequences.
208 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
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Richard Davis
261 books9 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 25, 2019
The premise of the book is hardly original: Set in an English boarding school, the narrator struggles with his inadequacies while developing a fascination for one of his fellow pupils. Where things differ from the canon, however, is that the fascination is not sexually motivated and that the book takes a grizzly turn at the end.
This last element feels like some reward granted the reader for sticking with those 200 pages. Even though it is short, the book is slow to take off (if it ever does) and has little momentum in its first half. There seems to be an awful lot of dead wood and very little in the way of a constructed and structured narrative. In addition, the lack of apparent sexual interest feels like misplaced prudery and self-deprivation from the author, which in turns makes the events described less understandable.
Failing mental health is a major theme of the book - quite explicitly in the eponymous figure, but also, and perhaps less obviously, in the narrator too, who is prone to paranoia and delusion. This could go some way towards making sense of it all but it is never really harnessed or explored. The added hints of the supernatural, with which narrator imbues his report, while adding some tension, further nibble away at the story's meaningfulness.
The writing is good however and I rather liked the ending with its unexpected intimation of redemption but I can't help thinking that a much tighter version of this, as a short story, would have had much more impact.
This last element feels like some reward granted the reader for sticking with those 200 pages. Even though it is short, the book is slow to take off (if it ever does) and has little momentum in its first half. There seems to be an awful lot of dead wood and very little in the way of a constructed and structured narrative. In addition, the lack of apparent sexual interest feels like misplaced prudery and self-deprivation from the author, which in turns makes the events described less understandable.
Failing mental health is a major theme of the book - quite explicitly in the eponymous figure, but also, and perhaps less obviously, in the narrator too, who is prone to paranoia and delusion. This could go some way towards making sense of it all but it is never really harnessed or explored. The added hints of the supernatural, with which narrator imbues his report, while adding some tension, further nibble away at the story's meaningfulness.
The writing is good however and I rather liked the ending with its unexpected intimation of redemption but I can't help thinking that a much tighter version of this, as a short story, would have had much more impact.
October 21, 2025
"Everyone called him Gabby. To have known him has meant to be uneasy ever after...
"Why should a middle-aged solicitor abandon his wife, his home and his job, to dispose of a dead friend's estate? To find the answer Mark Palfreyman must delve into his past and confront its demons.
"He looks back to 1968 and his last year at St. Clement's, a boys' public boarding school (for non UK readers that is a private fee paying school, similar to American 'prep' schools - Liam), and the people who dominated his adolescence: his family, well-meaning but an embarrassment; Ambrose the crushingly rude senior tutor; Judy, the history masters' girlfriend and Mark's 'Ideal Woman'. But looming over them all was Martin Gabriel - Gaby - the rebel angel who dazzles man and woman, master and pupil alike. Mark too, is captivated, but as he is drawn into Gaby's select circle, he glimpses a darker, grimmer side to the 'vermin blond' charmer.
"Vermin Blond brilliantly captures the claustrophobic atmosphere of an all-male society. Its savage denouement is at once believable and shocking." From the back cover of the 1992 Black Swan paperback edition of the novel.
I am afraid this is going to be a discursive and long review but I think it is necessary to explain how the date it is set in, as well as the date of its publication, bears on its content.
It is important to remember that British boarding schools, even up until the end of the 1960s, saw themselves as nurseries of the country's future ruling class, this didn't simply mean the rich (though the boys were all from well off families) but boys who would go to commanding positions in parliament, government, the army and civil service (far more prestigious institutions in the UK then the USA) the 'top' profession like law, medicine, etc. and ruling the, although by 1968 it was getting pretty threadbare, outposts of the British empire. In a way that has no parallel with American prep schools or continental boarding schools, a great deal of the day-to-day supervision of the boys in British boarding schools was placed in the hands of a group of senior boys (see my footnote *1). The idea was that by learning how to command and rule younger boys the older boys would leave and be able to command soldiers, servants and all others who fell 'below-the-salt' most particularly the populations of 'Half devil and half child' in their, formerly, vast imperial possessions.
Odd though it may appear this ethos was still alive and well in 1968 and it would be almost twenty years before the UK public schools recognised that their only mission, if they were to survive, was to educate the children of the plutocracy, often from overseas, to get into the best universities so they could go on and make the vast sums of money it would cost to send their children to these schools (see my footnote *2 below).
Also it is impossible to read the novel now and now be struck by how greatly society has changed. Nowadays the school would be sued, and prosecuted, for what happens and the attitudes towards drinking and smoking would be hard for most younger readers, particularly American ones, to understand. These things were forbidden but, at the same time, it was accepted that these things were done by adults and learning to deal/cope with them was part of growing up. So there was a greater tolerance for underage activities in the past, then there would be now. But in 1968 the vast majority of UK pupils left school and started work at 15/16 and were not viewed as 'children' in the way we would now.
As for the novel itself, it is well written and probably has its origins in the author's own schooldays (please see my footnote *3 below) and while I think it possible he wanted to say something about the way schools like St. Clements in the novel can destroy their pupils he also is so determined to write a boys boarding school novel were sex is not the motivation that he makes Gaby's allure for Mark almost impossible to understand.
It is very hard to write about the intensely complex relationships that teenage males, particularly in all male institutions, had in the past because they had so little contact with females. This doesn't mean that such intense relationships are 'gay' or necessarily sexual but they usually have an allusively homoerotic element. because Richard Davis can't or won't explore this Gaby's influence over Mark in any 'erotic' terms it never really makes sense. Indeed Gaby, who is supposed to be this mesmeric character, appears most of the time to be an unpleasant and rude slob who nobody knows or likes.
The real puzzler is the relationship between Gaby and the senior tutor Ambrose and it is this relationship that should have been at the heart of the novel because if Gaby dominates anyone it is Ambrose. They are clearly in some type of masochistic relationship with Ambrose allowing himself to be dominated by Gaby in the most extraordinary ways. This is not a retrospective reading and I am amazed that Richard Davis wasn't advised to rewrite the novel concentrating on this relationship. It would have been far more interesting, and a better novel, if he had.
I have awarded the novel three stars because I have a great affection for boarding school stories and while not a first rate one it has a great deal of charm, as well as being well written.
*1 There are many parallels with the way control of the prison populations in the USA was (and may still be) was delegated to 'strongmen' who were left unhindered as long as they maintained control and kept the prison in order. The major difference would be that this surrender of authority was opportunistic and usually unacknowledged, while in UK boarding schools it was openly acknowledged and institutionalised.
*2 The easiest way to understand the ethos of a school such as the one in this novel is to watch the 1968 film 'If' by Lindsay Anderson.
*3 The only information I have on the author of this novel is the minimal information available on my copy of the novel. He was born in Surrey in 1951 and attended public school (unnamed) which he left and then attended a crammer. He had worked in marketing, as a teacher and selling insurance. In 1980 he became an independent financial consultant and was supposed to be working on a second novel. I don't think it was ever published and I have found this Richard Davis impossible to trace via internet searches.
"Why should a middle-aged solicitor abandon his wife, his home and his job, to dispose of a dead friend's estate? To find the answer Mark Palfreyman must delve into his past and confront its demons.
"He looks back to 1968 and his last year at St. Clement's, a boys' public boarding school (for non UK readers that is a private fee paying school, similar to American 'prep' schools - Liam), and the people who dominated his adolescence: his family, well-meaning but an embarrassment; Ambrose the crushingly rude senior tutor; Judy, the history masters' girlfriend and Mark's 'Ideal Woman'. But looming over them all was Martin Gabriel - Gaby - the rebel angel who dazzles man and woman, master and pupil alike. Mark too, is captivated, but as he is drawn into Gaby's select circle, he glimpses a darker, grimmer side to the 'vermin blond' charmer.
"Vermin Blond brilliantly captures the claustrophobic atmosphere of an all-male society. Its savage denouement is at once believable and shocking." From the back cover of the 1992 Black Swan paperback edition of the novel.
I am afraid this is going to be a discursive and long review but I think it is necessary to explain how the date it is set in, as well as the date of its publication, bears on its content.
It is important to remember that British boarding schools, even up until the end of the 1960s, saw themselves as nurseries of the country's future ruling class, this didn't simply mean the rich (though the boys were all from well off families) but boys who would go to commanding positions in parliament, government, the army and civil service (far more prestigious institutions in the UK then the USA) the 'top' profession like law, medicine, etc. and ruling the, although by 1968 it was getting pretty threadbare, outposts of the British empire. In a way that has no parallel with American prep schools or continental boarding schools, a great deal of the day-to-day supervision of the boys in British boarding schools was placed in the hands of a group of senior boys (see my footnote *1). The idea was that by learning how to command and rule younger boys the older boys would leave and be able to command soldiers, servants and all others who fell 'below-the-salt' most particularly the populations of 'Half devil and half child' in their, formerly, vast imperial possessions.
Odd though it may appear this ethos was still alive and well in 1968 and it would be almost twenty years before the UK public schools recognised that their only mission, if they were to survive, was to educate the children of the plutocracy, often from overseas, to get into the best universities so they could go on and make the vast sums of money it would cost to send their children to these schools (see my footnote *2 below).
Also it is impossible to read the novel now and now be struck by how greatly society has changed. Nowadays the school would be sued, and prosecuted, for what happens and the attitudes towards drinking and smoking would be hard for most younger readers, particularly American ones, to understand. These things were forbidden but, at the same time, it was accepted that these things were done by adults and learning to deal/cope with them was part of growing up. So there was a greater tolerance for underage activities in the past, then there would be now. But in 1968 the vast majority of UK pupils left school and started work at 15/16 and were not viewed as 'children' in the way we would now.
As for the novel itself, it is well written and probably has its origins in the author's own schooldays (please see my footnote *3 below) and while I think it possible he wanted to say something about the way schools like St. Clements in the novel can destroy their pupils he also is so determined to write a boys boarding school novel were sex is not the motivation that he makes Gaby's allure for Mark almost impossible to understand.
It is very hard to write about the intensely complex relationships that teenage males, particularly in all male institutions, had in the past because they had so little contact with females. This doesn't mean that such intense relationships are 'gay' or necessarily sexual but they usually have an allusively homoerotic element. because Richard Davis can't or won't explore this Gaby's influence over Mark in any 'erotic' terms it never really makes sense. Indeed Gaby, who is supposed to be this mesmeric character, appears most of the time to be an unpleasant and rude slob who nobody knows or likes.
The real puzzler is the relationship between Gaby and the senior tutor Ambrose and it is this relationship that should have been at the heart of the novel because if Gaby dominates anyone it is Ambrose. They are clearly in some type of masochistic relationship with Ambrose allowing himself to be dominated by Gaby in the most extraordinary ways. This is not a retrospective reading and I am amazed that Richard Davis wasn't advised to rewrite the novel concentrating on this relationship. It would have been far more interesting, and a better novel, if he had.
I have awarded the novel three stars because I have a great affection for boarding school stories and while not a first rate one it has a great deal of charm, as well as being well written.
*1 There are many parallels with the way control of the prison populations in the USA was (and may still be) was delegated to 'strongmen' who were left unhindered as long as they maintained control and kept the prison in order. The major difference would be that this surrender of authority was opportunistic and usually unacknowledged, while in UK boarding schools it was openly acknowledged and institutionalised.
*2 The easiest way to understand the ethos of a school such as the one in this novel is to watch the 1968 film 'If' by Lindsay Anderson.
*3 The only information I have on the author of this novel is the minimal information available on my copy of the novel. He was born in Surrey in 1951 and attended public school (unnamed) which he left and then attended a crammer. He had worked in marketing, as a teacher and selling insurance. In 1980 he became an independent financial consultant and was supposed to be working on a second novel. I don't think it was ever published and I have found this Richard Davis impossible to trace via internet searches.
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