What We Hide by Marthe Jocelyn (review)

Illington Hall, a Quaker boarding school in northern England in the early 1970s, draws students from many different places, and they all have their own individual stories. In chapters with formats that include first-person and third-person narration, attempted film scripts, and letters, the book follows several of those students as they struggle with their own challenges and inner demons. American Jenny lies that she has a boyfriend in Vietnam; desperate Penelope struggles to keep up with her popular friend Kirsten; Luke is in love with Robbie in a town and time where being gay is unthinkable; Percy deals with the absence of his famous director dad; Nico faces exposure from his mother’s autobiographical book, in which he stars. Some of the individual threads are compelling here: there’s poignancy in Robbie’s and Luke’s separate takes on their dawning awareness of their sexual identity and budding romance, and in day-student Brenda’s attempts to juggle her working-class home life with her scholastic ambitions. The casually foul-mouthed exchanges, fevered gropings, and grim milieu recall the grittiness of Melvin Burgess’ Smack (BCCB 4/98). Unfortunately, the separate narratives never coalesce, and some of the strands are contrived and unsatisfying, serving mostly as offputting interruptions to the more compelling views; there’s also mixed success in the period atmosphere (anachronistic slang crops up frequently, and cultural references are sparse), and the voices are poorly differentiated. Still, the combination of angst and boarding school exoticism will appeal, and readers may appreciate both their differences from and similarities to the teens of another place and time.