English Monsters

James Scudamore is now a force in the English novel, his voice calm and assured. English Monsters is psychologically astute as a study of collusion and denial, and effective as a picture of time and class; but it has wider reach, as a story about the limits of empathy, the ease of retribution and the difficulty of justice

Hilary Mantel

A very impressive novel. Scudamore lightly, deftly conjures the closed world of an institution in which the men who spin the boys’ future are both magicians and monsters. The damage of patriarchy plays down the generations, its story told by a young outsider who more or less got away

Sarah Moss

English Monsters has the pace and intensity of the best kind of thriller, married to an almost unbearable poignancy. I've never read a novel as good and wise on trauma as it moves through the generations, but with such a light touch. There are moments in it that will stay with me forever

Evie Wyld

From the very title, English Monsters is politely merciless about that most English of traits, suppression. On relationships it is heartfelt and unshirking. What stays with me most though is the tenderness at the heart of the novel. Love we don't choose, that is just there; and how this throws all those loves we try to engineer into the wind

Cynan Jones

Breathtakingly good. Imagine Edward St Aubyn writing The Secret History and you’ll get an idea of how exquisite and compelling this story about male friendship and betrayal is

Alex Preston, Observer

English Monsters is a tremendously moving novel. What can be done in the face of unspeakable and complicated trauma? What if silence, action, vengeance and loyalty fail the person in need? James Scudamore has given us a timely, provocative work allowing past and present, with all their truths and apprehensions, to shift like rising waters.

Madeleine Thien

There are few prizes that Scudamore hasn’t been nominated for, and English Monsters will only add to his impressive tally… Scudamore’s insights are keen and his masterfully evocative writing never less than assured… His descriptions of [Max’s schooldays] etch themselves into your brain

Daily Mail

Scudamore deftly balances creepiness and tenderness…while retaining a cool anger at the imperial mindset that the boarding school system cultivates… English Monsters is one of the most well-observed novels I’ve read on the way that childhood abuse lingers into adulthood.

Johanna Thomas-Corr, Observer

[English Monsters] has echoes of Edward St Aubyn’s (more sardonic) Patrick Melrose series and Hanya Yanagihara’s (more lurid) A Little Life. It contains resonant phrases...on almost every page

Sunday Times

The pages bubble with quiet rage about an elite education system that wrecks even those it elevates... Scudamore is here for the long haul

John Self, Spectator

Heart-wrenching... A searing indictment of a culture that downplays and covers up horrors... Harrowing, deeply moving and richly insightful, this is Scudamore’s best novel yet

Philip Womack, Financial Times

A slow-burn chiller... An intelligent novel in which the horror lies not in explicit scenes of cruelty but rather in Scudamore’s lack of squeamishness about his subject’s queasier psychological corners

Anthony Cummins, Metro

Scudamore has an eye for physical details… His ear for comforting platitudes, especially those between men and boys, is also unerring.

Sarah Hayes, Tablet, *Novel of the Week*

Scudamore is skilled at creating atmosphere… A gripping meditation on class relations and formative friendships.

Laura Paterson, Irish News

Written in cool, clear-eyed prose, English Monsters is a taut psychological thriller and an astute comment on the institutional neuroses that now haunt our nation

Amanda Craig, Daily Telegraph

Dark, tender, troubling... It is impossible to read these pages and not to think of the present blight of emotionally cauterised boarding-school politicians whose various pathologies, fantasies and defence mechanisms Britain must continue to endure... [English Monsters] render[s] the dense and knotted contours of pain and shame and guilt in the hearts of the victims...with commendable imaginative skill and honesty.

Edward Docx, Guardian

Reminiscent of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and The Hiding Game by Naomi Wood, both in its anachronistic narrative structure and plot... Worth reading for fans of coming-of-age novels.

Carola Huttmann, Bookmunch

Scudamore is deft at capturing the way in which you can be drawn to someone despite knowing the worst of them. There is a bitter acknowledgement that monsters come in many forms - and many are difficult to resist.

Sarah Hughes

Steeped in violence and secrecy… This exploration of the long-term effects of abuse…is both convincing and chilling.

Mernie Gilmore, Daily Express

I'd like to recommend...James Scudamore's English Monsters, a beautifully written meditation on the kind of English masculinity from which out current leaders suffer.

Sarah Moss, Times Literary Supplement

[An] affecting depiction of the dark side of Englishness

Nicholas Clee, Times Literary Supplement

A disquieting coming-of-age tale that, in many passages, unfurls like an English comedy of manners – only one that, at any time, can suddenly be darkened by long shadows.

Thomas Marks, Literary Review