Box Hill: A Story of Low Self-Esteem

by Adam Mars-Jones

Overview

The winner of the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize 
A sizzling and deeply touching love story between two men, set in the gay biker community of 1970s London

In Box Hill, a vivid coming-of-age novel, a young man suddenly wakes up to his gay self—on his eighteenth birthday, when he receives the best gift ever: love and sex. In the woodsy cruising grounds of Box Hill, chubby Colin literally stumbles over glamorous Ray—ten years older, leather-clad, cool, handsome, a biker, and a top. (Colin, if largely unformed, is nevertheless decidedly a bottom.) Colin narrates his love—conveying how mind-blowing being with Ray is—in comically humble-pie terms. “If there are leaders then there must be followers, and I had followership skills in plenty just waiting to be tapped. To this day I can’t see a fat kid in shorts without wanting to rush over and give him what comfort I can. To tell him it won’t always be like this.”
       Mars-Jones uses Colin’s naivete to give a fresh view of the world and of love. Before long, however, homophobia, class, family strife, and loss rear their ugly heads. Yet in the end, it seems Colin’s modest view oddly takes in the widest horizon: he learns that “people can care about anything.” A surprise and a pleasure, Box Hill is an intensely moving short novel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780811230056
Publisher:	New Directions Publishing Corporation
Publication date:	09/01/2020
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.70(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Adam Mars-Jones' collection of stories Lantern Lecture won a 1982 Somerset Maugham Award, and he has since published a debut novel, Pilcrow (2008) and a second novel, Cedilla (2011). Other books include Noriko Smiling (2011, focused on Yasujiro Ozu), his memoir, Kid Gloves (2015), and a selection of his film writings, Second Sight (2019). He writes book reviews for the Observer and the London Review of Books.

Editorial Reviews

08/10/2020

Power dynamics are the central theme in this short, bittersweet story of a young man’s sexual awakening, by Mars-Jones (Cedilla). On his 18th birthday in 1975, Colin Smith ventures to Box Hill, a tree-lined cliff in Surrey commonly frequented by motorcyclists. Desperate to one day have his own bike as well as growing emboldened to explore his sexuality, Colin is drawn to the bikers as much as the bikes. While hiking through an overgrown area, he trips over Ray, a handsome, leather-clad biker napping against a tree. The moment kick-starts a six-year relationship between the two men, defined by Colin’s submission to Ray—who tells people “Colin didn’t fall for me, he fell over me”—who introduces Colin to the world of biking, poker, and sexual exploration. Colin describes Ray as a sum of contradictions—rugged and dismissive, but also socially aware, and he allows Ray to mistreat him after he moves into Ray’s apartment, remaining emotionally attached despite Ray’s cruelty, such as forcing Colin out of the apartment every morning at nine a.m. Near the end of his relationship with Ray, Colin goes on holiday with his family, a decision he deeply regrets. Mars-Jones colors Colin’s tender reminiscences with humor, sex, and tragedy. This is an indelible snapshot of 1970s English gay biker culture. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"I very much enjoyed Box Hill. It is a characteristic Mars-Jones mixture of the shocking, the endearing, the funny, and the sad, with an unforgettable narrator. The sociological detail is as ever acutely enduring."

Margaret Drabble

"Mars-Jones is a writer of wonderful originality and wit."

The Times (London)

"Dry, accurate, tragic."

Edmund White

"Mars-Jones’s prose is exceptionally nimble, dry, humorously restrained, very English, with a little Nabokovian velvet too. He can describe more or less anything and make it interesting."

London Review of Books - James Wood

★ 2020-06-17
In a cruisy, pastoral spot, a young, inexperienced gay man trips over the “long and insolently extended” legs of a mysterious older gay man and falls, quite literally, into a new life.

It’s 1975, south of London, and clumsy, pudgy Colin is turning 18 on a Sunday, the day the bikers hang out at Box Hill in Surrey. Colin is so self-conscious about his weight and looks that he doesn’t understand that sexy, 6-foot-5 Ray—after an initial bit of sex in the fields near the pub where the bikers congregate—is taking possession of him by moving him into his home and controlling almost every aspect of his life. But that control is something Colin yearns for. Told by Colin years after the relationship has ended, Mars-Jones’ trim, poignant novel humanizes the intricacies of a dominant-submissive gay relationship. “If there are to be leaders then there must be followers, and I had followership skills in plenty,” Colin confides. Some aspects of their six years together are shocking: Colin learns to prefer sleeping on the floor and doesn’t ever learn Ray’s last name, occupation, or birthday. Since the novel is narrated by Colin, and since Colin loves the mystery of being with Ray, the potential pitfall here is that the mystery man will remain a cipher to readers. But Mars-Jones uncovers revealing details about Ray, like the fact that although he always heads up the motorcade of bikers, he’s not all cocky swagger; he’s a real stickler for speed limits and is courteous to pedestrians. Their relationship may end in tragedy, but it’s a joy to learn that Colin conquers the pejorative assessment in the novel’s subtitle, A Story of Low Self-Esteem.

A relationship that could seem profoundly unfair blossoms into a revelation of love and magic.

Kirkus Reviews