The Custard Boys
by John Rae
This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
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Pub Date Sep 05 2017 | Archive Date Sep 20 2017
Description
This is the story of a group of thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys living out the war in a remote corner of the English countryside. Middle class evacuees or farmers’ sons, their one aim is to use the time well until they will be old enough to fight. The year is 1942 and even in this quiet corner of Norfolk the second-hand excitement of war reaches them through the cinema, the newspapers and the ‘jingoistic’ talk of the adults. Stimulated by this, they play war games and live by a harsh military code.
At their school a new boy arrives; he is the son of a new master, Jewish-Austrian and a refugee from Nazi persecution. Because he is a stranger he is put under the charge of John Curlew, one of the gang. A friendship ripens between Curlew and the Jewish boy, Mark. Grudgingly the other boys accept him into the gang.
Into this situation comes the news that one of the local boys has won the Victoria Cross for bravery in the field. The news gives impetus to the gang’s need to prove that they too have courage. They challenge the group of working class village boys to fight. When the time comes Mark runs away in the face of the enemy.
To the rest of the gang he is a coward and must be punished; cowardice is the one thing that they have been taught to despise. Only when their plan to punish Mark goes tragically wrong does his friend John Curlew begin to realise that the standards he has accepted so eagerly are in fact rotten.
Advance Praise
‘John Rae’s The Custard Boys is his first novel, but it has the economy of effort, balance of mood and action, and accuracy of aim that one might look for in the work of a thoroughly experienced novelist. It would be difficult to praise too highly this short, tight, absorbing novel, whose unequivocal message is qualified only by the true novelist’s knowledge of human imperfection.’
Manchester Guardian
‘Mr John Rae writes with the greatest sensitivity and his novel is poignant, aware and, in its implications, tragic.’
Sphere
‘Arresting first novel, rough and rowdy as a street fight, about a gang of hard-bitten grammar school roustabouts and the tragedy they project upon a Jewish-Austrian refugee boy.’
Daily Mail
‘Bitter and alive, coarse and real, The Custard Boys is extremely readable. Mr Rae is a powerful writer.’
Sunday Times
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781909869981 |
| PRICE | $14.99 (USD) |
Links
Featured Reviews
Rhian J, Reviewer
“Cowardy, cowardy custard,
Can’t take your mustard.”
I was drawn to this book when I saw it on NetGalley because of its gorgeous yellowy cover and its title, ‘The Custard Boys’. It made me think of my twin sons who are custard freaks and would eat it for breakfast, dinner and lunch if we let them! However, the boys in the story are far from the sweet-toothed, innocent ‘custard boys’ in my own house… the boys in the book are cruel, vicious, aggressive and blood-thirsty creatures, created by the adults and the time they live in.
We learnt of the jargon of the wardroom and the mess, the laconic understatement of death in which a man was never killed; he “bought it,” or his “number came up.” And with these prep-school catchphrases the survivors diminished death, relegating it to the level of a sporting setback… we were left in no doubt that war was great fun; a tough yet ennobling game.”
This book is set in England during the second World War. The boys in the story are would-be heroes and itching to be old enough to become soldiers and share in the glory of being labelled ‘heroes.’ Into this troublesome mix arrives Mark, a stranger into a village of strangers (a number of the children living there are refuges) who befriends John, the main narrator of the story. John is tolerated by his peers at best and his friendship with the foreign Mark further alienates him from the gang. To prove his loyalty to the custard boys, John agrees to things that you just know aren’t going to end well for anyone.
“We were a pack of young wolves hunting in the bleak hills of boredom… only by seeking danger could we avenge our day-dreams that had been condemned to march in an imaginary war.”
This book is a very uncomfortable read and you can see the ending coming a mile off. At times, the language and prose is so beautiful that it shadows the sense of foreboding that is present throughout the book and you forget the darkness of the subject of the story. This makes for a very interesting, thought-provoking read. It reminded me of ‘The Lord of the Flies’, which I haven’t read for over twenty years but I can still remember how I felt reading it and that’s how I felt reading ‘The Custard Boys’ – worried and afraid for the ‘weaker’ boys of the pack, and helpless in stopping things from moving towards their inevitable end.
“Thousands of years ago God told us not to kill, and in all that time we have made only a minute effort to obey Him. We are still wild animals with clothes on.”
Despite the darkness of the book and its genre (I don’t tend to read ‘war’ books), I did enjoy this book although it was a far cry from what I had pictured in my mind as to what it was going to be like. Since finishing the book, I’ve found out that it was originally published in the early ‘60s. This explains how some of the more grittier and gruesome details of the story have been censored. Had this book been written today, I imagine it would have been a lot more graphic and even more confronting for the reader. Maybe the more-subtle approach to the tension, tragedy and turmoil of the book made it all the more troublesome to read as your imagination has to work harder and the unknown is more sinister.
