I read the first in John Boyne’s four-novella series last year, ending my review with reservations but planning to read the next instalment. While Water looked at the complicity of a wife in her husband’s sexual abuse of minors, Earth is set in the world of professional football where two players are accused of a crime, one of rape the other as an accessory.
This life, this terrible life I have, was his dream, not mine. I’ve become everything he wanted me to be since I left the island four years ago, but he’s still controlling me.
Evan has an extraordinary footballing talent but when he runs away from his small Irish island, heading for London, it’s an artistic career he’s set his heart on. Hopelessly naïve, he approaches a string of galleries all of which turn him away. When his money runs out, he stumbles into lucrative work as a rent boy, ‘auditioned’ by a wealthy, well-connected man. Evan is a beautiful young man, an easy commodity for Rafe to sell, attracting the attention of someone so powerful Evan must sign a non-disclosure agreement before being put to work until Sir’s penchant for humiliation and violence gets out of hand. Evan has no choice but to turn to football, approaching a Championship team where he and Robbie become friends of a sort. Evan’s desire for the arrogant self-absorbed Robbie is tacit but known and exploited. After a party in Robbie’s flat, Evan is accused of filming his friend’s rape of a young woman.
I became a different boy than the one I was supposed to be. I wanted to be a painter. I wanted to be good. I wanted to love someone, and to be loved in return. But none of those ambitions came to be.
Boyne explores an impressive number of themes for such a short piece of fiction – class entitlement and privilege, the leeway given to talented young footballers thrust into immense wealth with no moral compass, the way in which the legal profession handles sexual offences, corruption, moral and otherwise – to name but a few. Several bombshells are dropped into Evan’s narrative, bringing readers up short as we learn more of his short life. I found it gripping – complex and thought provoking. Although I was a little unconvinced by the ending, I finished Earth without the reservations I felt about Water. A thoroughly accomplished piece of fiction which gives you more to think about in its 176 pages than many novels do in 400 or more. Looking forward to the next instalment later this year.
Doubleday London 9780857529831 176 pages Hardback (read via NetGalley)
It really throws the moral compass, doesn’t it?
It certainly does! I’ve often thought about young, immensely talented people thrust into the limelight with money thrown at them but no guidance as to how to deal with it all. John Boyne illustrates the consequences so well.
This sounds really bleak, but I’m wondering if the tone/style prevents it from being completely grim?
It’s handled very well and there’s hope at the end but it is quite harrowing.
This one’s definitely on the list.
I enjoyed Water but this is a real step up.
Excellent.
I haven’t read this series by Boyne yet. I have read his earlier works. His output is prolific.
This is a step outside his usual doorstopping novels but he’s already halfway through the cycle with the third part planned for November.
I haven’t read any of these novellas as yet, but will definitely read one or two before the end of the year. This one sounds particularly interesting.
This one’s the best of the two, Cathy. Very ambitious themes for such a short book but Boyne explores them brilliantly.
I listened to Water on audio (read by Niamh Cusack) and now have Earth lined up to go – I wondered which character/s from Water would be picked up again in Earth … now I know 🙂
The third in the cycle is due here in November and I’m wondering what the link will be!
Such a short piece for so many hard-hitting themes. But I can see it, especially as so many of these themes are intersecting, so he could explore many aspects of a story all at once.
He usually writes doorstoppers and I wondered if that was why I felt Water wasn’t as satisying but he’s really got into his stride with Earth.
I got into a conversation with a football fan recently about the amount of money paid to youngsters with incredible talents – £3,000 a week apparently in one case! They’re just kids so no wonder they go off the tracks
Absolutely! They won’t have had a normal childhood, either.
After hearing about Earth and wanting to read it I discovered it was part of a series and decided to read/listen to all the books and in order. I very much enjoyed Water and immediately listened to Earth. I am a fan of John Boyle and the subject was interesting to me as my son spent his secondary school years in a Championship football club Academy. I know this is a novella and not an account of Academy life but some of those situations/incidents frustrated me as they just didn’t ring true or plausible. Strangely, I have also just been a juror on a sexual assault trial where the decision we had to make was whether or not there was consent. The defendant had also filmed it and we had to watch the footage. Like Robbie he was arrogant during the trial but unlike Robbie he was in his fifties and not famous (we unanimously found him guilty). I found John Boyle’s writing of the trial difficult to listen to but that was because it was so accurate – and shows why so few of these cases actually come to trial, never mind result in a conviction.
This is a bleak listen/read, full of damaged characters, but as usual Boyne’s writing is brilliant, powerful and thought provoking. However I don’t think I’ll be recommending it to my 84 year old mother ( even though she loved The Heart’s Invisible Furies!)
Thanks so much for your comment, Jane. That’s such an interesting point about the contrast in accuracy. I wonder how the audio and print versions would compare – I’m assuming it was abridged. Listening to the trial scenes must have been gruelling for you. I found it hard enough to read them without that experience. Definitely keen to read the next instalment although I suspect we can expect more bleakness. I think I read somewhere that abuse was a theme that would run through the cycle.
I’ve just finished reading Earth and feel thrown about by the story- that the narrator, Evan, did something so appalling but you feel for him too as an abused young man. So many of the characters are well drawn, his isolated, downtrodden but loving mother, the caring priest who challenges Evan, the MP who moonlights as a morally empty, high end pimp.
It’s extraordinarily powerful, isn’t it. Beginning with Evan’s collusion then slowly revealing the abuse he’d suffered was so well done, challenging our reconceptions and engaging our sympathy. I’m looking forward to Fire next year.