AustLit

'In the winter of 1962, 17-year-old Radford is brought from London to Goodwin Manor, somewhere in the English Midlands. While we don’t know why Radford has been brought here, we learn that the manor is an institution for boys who have been “found by trouble”. He is taken to Teddy, the eccentric, kindly man in charge, who tells him practically nothing about the place, and who banishes another boy to the chicken coops to make room for him. Radford promptly gets swept up in the commotion of this lark as crowds of boys clear out the boy’s things and set them back up in the coops, and his first impression of the other residents, these marauding bodies and “sallow figures scoffing and competing”, is of a whirlwind of activity.' (Publication summary)