Peter Farquhar

Between Boy and Man Peter Farquhar

Publisher Marketing: 'Between Boy and Man' is set in a contemporary public school. The school Chaplain, a middle-aged, homosexual, professionally experienced and deeply spiritual man, runs the First XI football team. He applies ointment to a boy's shin after a minor injury. The boy, though a gifted sportsman, is unreliable and is later dropped from the team. He is a scholar who comes from a one-parent family. He reacts with fury to the action taken against him and, without evidence but with instinctive accuracy, he takes revenge, strongly abetted by his mercenary mother, who presents an allegation to an over zealous social security department. The school authorities react with caution, forced to yield to the prevailing climate of political correctness, a phenomenon which is challenged elsewhere in the novel. The result is catastrophic. These events are set in the microcosmic society of a boarding school. The action and the characters are divided approximately equally between the teachers and the pupils, with a variety of characters who are required to respond to the central plot. A pivotal concern relates to the central character's inner conflict between his Christian faith and his homo-erotic impulses.