The book is so black: past and present, man and boy, England and Lebanon, all is war. Once doubt had begun, it spread, like Duff-Revel's bullying. You can't imagine why he should be homesick at all. And apart from Omer, he only remembers an extremely un-Lebanese bunch of Coke - and coke-swilling American teenagers. Shadrach's memories should be the opposite of this unreality, but instead they are hardly distinguishable from it. Palestinian terrorism is Ferrers' romantic obsession. In his memory Shadrach seems to be almost permanently in his father's car, driven by Omer, who will become a Palestinian freedom fighter. Shady's parents are vague apart from occasional glimpses, so is the land. The past is meant to be stronger than the present, but it isn't. Hanania's descriptions of Palgrave's rise, of Ferrers' betrayal, of Duff-Revel's reign of terror are entirely convincing.Ĭounterpointed to the reality of school, however, are Shady's memories of home and here the doubts creep in. If the suggestion that school is an image of society is a cliche, it's only because it's so obviously true. I believed the war games, the brocking (bating), the mad crazes the extraordinary cruelty, the rigid hierarchy and the grotesque racial and religious prejudices of small boys. I have never been an eight-year-old boy, thank God, so can only judge from the literary models for this part of the book, primarily of course Lord of the Flies. The story begins in 1972, when Hanania was eight: so are Shadrach and (even though they are English) his fellow-exiles.
And Homesick is a novel of exile, with a hidden Jewish theme. Tony Hanania, we read in the blurb, was born in Beirut and educated at Winchester Shadrach is the name given to Hanania, prince of Judah, in his Babylonian exile. Its setting is a prep school for Winchester its narrator is Toby Shadrach, born in Lebanon and homesick for it. Like most first novels it is heavily autobiographical. Homesick by Tony Hanania, Bloomsbury, pounds 14.99
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