by Daren King (Author)
Nine-year-old Tom Boler comes home one day to find his mother gone. What happens next is his story as he negotiates a new, perilous, adult world. He is visited by Uncle Dustman, who collects rubbish bags and is obsessed with donkeys; he is adopted briefly by Primula Spatula, a posh dipsomaniac, and has a run-in with bad boys in the park before being retrieved by the mysterious Boxy, who lives with Roxy. Tom becomes part of their strange family with all its secrets and quickly meets their friends - including the sinister Robert Tablet: the one with the bags of 'spangles' that make everything go peculiar. Then Tom's real adventures begin. In this extraordinary prequel to Boxy an Star, Daren King looks obliquely at the inner-city world of ecstasy, sexual promiscuity and sexual confusion, class conflict and poverty - all through the wide-open eyes of nine-year-old Tom: very innocent, but very eager to try it all.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Edition: New edition
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 04 May 2006
ISBN 10: 0099445158
ISBN 13: 9780099445159
Book Overview: 'King is a writer with a completely unique voice, and Tom Boler is another polished gem of comedy and pathos' - Independent on Sunday