These occupations betrayed a similar pattern: Initial enthusiasm, bemusement, claustrophobic terror.Įurope beckoned. I played Querelle in an avant-garde Mime Company for three years, performing a controversial adaptation of Genet’s novel banned by the Scottish Kirk. I was the singer and songwriter in the punk band, the Androids. As a youth, I tried a few different career paths: labourer, clerk, gardener, salesman, barman, doorman. Dick and Conrad and you will have guessed that this is not a book for children - unless like Jean they are very brave. A rite of passage, a symbolic journey through Hades, the struggle between good and evil, the adventure of appearance and reality? There is something here of Dante, Peake, Carroll. A journey to the door of the Seventh Silence. Jean's quest to find her becomes a personal journey. But is she hiding or helping? Is she alive or dead? In point of fact is Jean alive or dead? It's a question that the enigmatic Moonster might answer. There are endless dusty corridors, back ways, cellars and chimney flues, hidden rooms, and garrets and just occasionally you might find a pupil running for his life. Classrooms where paper planes carry passengers, statues cry and board games cost your life, books ask you questions.

Behind the stockroom door there are other classrooms. Jean is about to discover that his school is more foreign than he could possibly imagine. There are darker things that would gladly fill them. Unluckily for Jean there are worse things than bullies: There are vacant black holes in the corners of his mind. Nobody likes Jean because he is half French. Father is dying and mother has sent him to an English school.

School by Craig Herbertson