This book comes with a warning - side effects include rolling around on the carpet, laughing hysterically and gasping for air...

Spud Milton is embarking on his first year at an elite boys-only private school. Cursed with parents well beyond the lunatic fringe and a dormitory full of strange characters (Gecko, Rambo and Mad Dog to name just a few), Spud discovers that the first steps along the path to manhood aren't the easiest ones to take. There will be trouble ahead, from illegal night swimming to ghostbusting to teacher baiting. Armed with only his wits and his diary, Spud invites us into the mind of a boy whose eyes are being opened to girls, friendship... and complete insanity.

Set in 1990 in South Africa, all the elements of a classic boys school story are present here in this debut novel from John van de Ruit. Take a pinch of Tom Brown's Schooldays, a dash of Ronald Searle's Molesworth, a sprinkling of Roadl Dahl's Boy and a heavy tot of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole and you may get some idea of the delightful madcap eccentricity of this story. Sports matches, school plays, bullies, trips, seances and night swimming mixed with crude humour and slapstick comedy all come together to produce a fast moving and hilarious narrative. The reader can really live every moment with Spud, from the first moment he crosses the school threshold, through his tentative romances and climaxing in an end the reader will truly not see coming.

 Set during the post-Apartheid period, with frequent references to current political happenings (ie the freeing of Nelson Mandela), van de Ruit combines depth and tragedy with pacy hilarity extremely successfully. I look forward to the sequel...

Keith Gray's review in The Guardian  

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2008-07-19