JEAN, adolescent heartbreak made tougher by class divide

JEAN
MADELEINE DUNNIGAN
W.W. Norton (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$28.99 all editions, available for preorder, delivery 13 January 2026

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Seventeen–year–old Jean, a troubled Jewish boy caught in the countercultural swirl of 1970s London, arrives at Compton Manor, a rural alternative boarding school for boys with “problems.” Though he is an outcast among these outcasts, he is befriended by Tom, a much wealthier, more popular classmate, and it seems as if Jean’s world might change.

When things turn romantic, Jean is tipped into a heady, overwhelming infatuation. What before seemed odd now brims with promise—the compulsory farming at school, reading poetry aloud, pagan ritual—and Jean thinks he might even pass his exams. But the differences between Tom and Jean—Tom is tuition–paying, Jean is on a scholarship; Tom social, Jean reclusive—create too wide a chasm to cross.

Set over one hot summer, Jean is a startlingly assured debut about the kinds of love that break us and make us whole.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Choosing not to use conventional punctuation is the root of many novelists' downfall. As a debut novelist, Author Dunnigan set herself this monumental task, on top of several other monumental tasks in telling the story of a young Queer boy coming alive to sex and sexuality in a highly specific milieu. It is an uneven success at them all. The least successful is the sense of place; it's 1976 in London, but if you want to be transported to 1976 London, this is not your best choice of a read.

Jean is a scholarship boy in a behavioral-problem-student boarding school. It's a sketched in place, apart from some unpleasantly graphic dealings with animals dead and alive. Those are extremely particular environments; with a reader's expectations set on feeling immersed in the world they're not successful. I can't say I was ever more than tangentially aware of the environment. It is not described or, better still, evoked. It's stated this is where the action takes place. It works against the sense of place for the characters, teen boys mind you, to wander around in time as the narrative continues. This is how an older person experiences time...this connects to *that* and whatever happened to him anyway but this jerk can't cut in line! No! get back to your place while I find my damn wallet again did I leave it on the counter? oh good there it is.

Teenagers aren't prone to this yet, every moment is real! alive! pulsing with possibility! especially when you're newly In Love with the most gorgeous exciting amazing boy on the planet who has the sexiest...oh my he's hot. What this does give the reader is the World of Jean, all third person, all interior, all solipsistic as a boy usually is.

Punctuation keeps the stream of consciousness from bursting the banks and making a mess. This story is the mess that punctuation and dialogue tags prevent. It's not bad, as in not incompetent in any way. It's just more work than it needs to be to pick the threads of doomed adolescent heartbreak out of the verbs. As a superannuated version of Jean, I can say Author Dunnigan's chosen a strangely indirect way to deal with adolescent male libido by distancing the reader from it in this stream of consciousness. It's almost sexless sexuality presented in the flashes of memory and the internal asides and other tangential evocations.The way she's chosen to present him to us felt distancing to me because he is not experiencing the moment. He's a teen boy in love, he would be thinking A LOT about sex in direct and physical terms, since he isn't a virgin any more.

I'm still excited by the read. I liked the experience of Jean's rootlessness, his inability to see anything not directly pointed out to him. I think a big part of my desire to keep reading was rooted in my sense that, for all the author's odd choices and off framing that didn't work for me, I got to see the world from the haze of Wrongness that Jean has always felt...that so many like him, limited, ungainly, graceless, feel. It was a big mental leap to be in Jean's skin. He does not think ahead, he is not aware of others as real, he can't fully grasp his choices are in fact his own. Jean does not make choices. Things happen to Jean. The constant tobacco use and the uncontrolled drug use were deeply familiar, very much part of adolescence in the era. In the end, Jean is a boy whose manhood we don't get to see but which is not likely to be much better than his adolescence of betrayals has been.

My recommendation sounds grudging. It really isn't. This is a debut novel that takes a big swing. It is more successful than not; it's only that the presentation isn't going to entice readers who aren't already fans of stream-of-consciousness storytelling. It felt fine to me, and might to you if you're willing to make room for a man being born and broken at the same time.