A fantastic read - Patrick Gale just seems to keep them coming! This intimate portrayal of life at a boarding school, revolving around three friends, is absolutely captivating. Gale's characters, both male and female, feel so real, and each scenario is deftly illustrated and spun out. Wow. I hope I can write as well as this one day - Gale really is a cut above when it comes to well-woven plots and fascinating characters.

Amazon blurb:
Youthful beauty, intellectual brilliance, physical passion, tragedy and disgrace are all in this wonderful novel as told through the eyes of a 14-year-old girl. Sophie is a self-contained, exceptionally bright child who has no known parents and has spent all her life in a children's home. Her life is transformed when she wins a scholarship to Tatham's, a kind of Oxbridge university for teenagers, but this is only the start of an education as much emotional as intellectual. She falls hopelessly in love with Lucas, adored gay son of a wealthy Jewish family and, through him, is drawn into a tangle of betrayed friendship and forbidden passions that ends in tragedy and disgrace. But school is only half the story. Spanning the years 1975 to 1979 the chapters alternate between terms and holidays, between Sophie's dogged pursuit of the glittering prizes and her slow, painful discovery of who she is and where she belongs. Through other people's families, and especially other people's mothers, she learns as much about the mysterious laws of class and love as she learns from her teachers about the Latin and Greek that will prove her passport to security.

Provisional order for the ray:

Cross-patch
RubyBlueLady
Scotsbookie
Winterson
Arturogrande

all UK so far but open to more...

And off it goes to cross-patch...

Thank you PussInBooks, this Patrick Gale has made its first stop. I couldn't resist - I have read the first page already. Yes! But, it must wait its turn (but that won't be long).

Patrick Gale says himself that he has to get his characters right before he can start writing - and they are simply wonderful in this teenage tale of love and angst. The days I read this novel went by in a flash, and I'm left wanting the next one from this author's list!

I'll post on to RubyBlueLady when I have an address.

I now have an address for RubyBlueLady so shall be going to the post today.

This has arrived safely. Thank you for the post card cross patch :-)

Will read in the next day or two.

I love Patrick Gale's work and here he proves his worth by writing about a teenage girl as if he's BEEN a teenage girl LOL. Loved the book, want to read everything he's written now.

Thanks for sharing, will post on asap.

Arrived safely this morning, thank you! Next up to be read.

This is the second book I've read by Patrick Gale & I thoroughly enjoyed it. Patrick Gale manages to write from the point of view of a teenage girl & it is completely believable.

I will get this moving again after the weekend.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Enjoy!

Received safe and well. Will get to it asap. Thanks :)

I just can't get into this one - new baby in the house and am only able to read in snatches here and there. I feel like I've held onto it enough now so going to give up and pass it onto the next reader, where hopefully it will be given the time it no doubt deserves.

Arrived safe and sound - thanks very much. I've got a few rings and rays ahead of it, but I'll try to get to it as soon as I can.

First let me apologise for stalling this ring for so long. I had a lot of ring and ray books come all at once, and then Christmas and New Year got in the way... It's no excuse, I know, and I'm very sorry.
This is the second Patrick Gale novel I've read, and it's my favourite so far. I had to keep reminding myself that Gale is a middle-aged man and not a teenage girl, as his depiction of Sophie was spot-on.
I loved the contrasting worlds of children's home and elite boarding school that Sophie managed to live in, and the characters who inhabited them both. They could so easily have tipped over the line of believability, but Gale skilfully managed to avaoid that. I really believed in all of them.
Thanks very much for sharing this, PussIn Books - it's finally on its way home to you.

On its way to Betty22, who has it on her wishlist.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, Betty22!

This arrived today in the post. Thank you for sharing, both to PussInBooks (great BC name by the way!) and Arturogrande who posted it on to me.
I've read nearly all of Patrick Gale's books - but not this one for some reason!
Really looking forward to a good sit down with this. It's calling me....