The Glass Field for reading groups

The Glass Field centres on the uneasy connection between two damaged fifteen-year-olds. Although the novel follows adolescent characters, it is very much written for an adult readership. Using an adolescent lens to bring a compromised adult world into focus has always fascinated me: think of McEwan’s Atonement, or Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults, or Moss’s Ghost Wall. All of these use their young characters as a way of bringing adults into focus. The Glass Field follows in those footsteps.

The novel stays very close to Scott and Jodie’s experience of a particular summer: their fears, grief, isolation, relationships, and growing dependence on one another. Along the way it explores themes of loss, self-harm, self-image, outsiderness, and the stories they construct in order to survive emotionally. Although the book is set in 1986, those themes are, I think, just as relevant today as they ever were.

If your book club or reading group is interested in reading the novel, and would like some background notes designed to open up discussion rather than lead readers towards fixed conclusions, do please to get in touch via the Contact Page.

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If you would like, you can also read an extract from the novel.