Friendly fire gay

By 20, he was sponsored to the police academy and graduated with top honors in his class. Still, as Friendly Fire focuses on the vexed question of teacher-pupil relationships, she is left as clueless as the boys whose unchecked passion leads them into danger.

The book is characterised by a coherent narrative arc.

But Sophie’s other, surer love affair is with education. Audaciously, Gale writes the book from the point of view of a teenage girl – and succeeds with aplomb. It details the teenage years of Sophie, an intelligent orphan who wins a scholarship to an exclusive boarding school in the 70s (which I believe is loosely based on Winchester College), mostly full of boys and with only few girls, and lots of archaic practices.

Inspirational.

Daily Express

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Patrick Gale’s precise, delicate style in Friendly Fire lends itself well to a story of adolescent turmoil in the hothouse environment of a public school where the narrative, if not the language, is occasionally in danger of becoming overwrought… Emphasising the heated significance with which everything is imbued in adolescence, Gale’s finely tuned rites of passage novel depicts a learning curve of passion, betrayal and shame.

Metro – Tina Jackson

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Patrick Gale is a writer who has always seemed particularly well-attuned to the assorted agonies and ecstasies of childhood, and while at times Friendly Fire may read like a junior version of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, the emotions still ring true.

Daily Mail – Amber Pearson

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Gale has crafted an engaging coming-of-age novel, which plays as part regendered autobiography and part classic “English schooldays” book.

Wealthy, Jewish and an exotic contrast to the rough-edged boys she has grown up with, he draws her into a tangle of forbidden passion which seems doomed to end in disgrace. She falls in with two superficially assured gay youths: the exotic, Jewish Lucas, and a blond cricketer, Charlie.

Gale’s chief trick is in relating how the boys’ emotional and sexual initiations are cannily interpreted by someone beyond them.

We were lucky, it seemed, to have the sort of parents who were too preoccupied or embarrassed to acknowledge who the school was allowing us to become. And that female gaze proves less forgiving than his own memory might have been.

As a foundling who has spent all her life in institutions, Sophie is well-trained to survive life as a scholar in an ancient boarding school.

No amount of homework, however, can prepare her for meeting and falling hopelessly in love with Lucas. In the first 300 pages, there isn’t a single fatality. A very enjoyable read from one of Britain’s finest novelists.

Gay Times

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