Meet Oliver Tate, fifteen years old. Convinced that his father is depressed and his mother is having an affair with her capoeira teacher, (‘a hippy-looking twonk’), he embarks on a hilariously misguided campaign to bring the family back together. Meanwhile, he is also trying to lose his virginity – before he turns sixteen – to his pyromaniac girlfriend Jordana.
Introduction to the author and book
Joe Dunthorne (is a Welsh novelist, poet and journalist. He made his name with his novel Submarine (2008), which has been translated into fifteen languages and was made into a film in 2010. His second novel, Wild Abandon (2011), won the RSL Encore Award. A selection of his poems, was published in 2010 in the Faber and Faber New Poets series. His first solo collection of poems, O Positive, appeared in 2019. Joe is currently working on a family history called The Daughter of Radium.
Joseph Oliver Dunthorne was born in 1982 and brought up in Swansea. He has two sisters, Anna and Leah. He lives in London. Dunthorne was educated at Olchfa School before going on to study Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia from where he received BA and MA degrees in Creative Writing. In the final year of his BA course, he began writing his debut novel Submarine. During study for his MA at UEA, he won the university’s inaugural Curtis Brown Prize for Submarine.
Submarine (published in 2008
The dryly precocious, soon-to-be-fifteen-year-old hero of this engagingly offbeat debut novel, Oliver Tate lives in the seaside town of Swansea, Wales. At once a self-styled social scientist, a spy in the baffling adult world surrounding him, and a budding, hormone-driven emotional explorer, Oliver is stealthily (and perhaps a bit more nervously than he’d ever admit) nosing his way forward through the murky and uniquely perilous waters of adolescence. His objectives? Uncovering the secrets behind his parents’ teetering marriage, unraveling the mystery that is his alluring and equally quirky classmate Jordana Bevan, and understanding where he fits in among the pansexuals, Zoroastrians, and other mystifying, fascinating beings in his orbit.
“It’s in my interests to know about my parents’ mental problems,” he reasons. Thus, when he discovers that his affable dad is quietly struggling with depression, Oliver marshals all the daytime-TV pop-psychology wisdom at his command–not to mention his formidable, uninhibited powers of imagination–in order to put things right again. But a covert expedition into the mysterious territory of middle-aged malaise is bound to be tricky business for a teenager with more to learn about the agonies and ecstasies of life than a pocket thesaurus and his “worldly” school chum Chips can teach him.
Ready or not, however, Oliver is about to get a crash course. His awkwardly torrid and tender relationship with Jordana is hurtling at the speed of teenage passion toward the inevitable magic moment … and whatever lies beyond. And his boy-detective exploits have set him on a collision course with the New Age old flame who’s resurfaced in his mother’s life to lead her into temptation with lessons in surfing, self-defence … and maybe seduction. Struggling to buoy his parents’ wedded bliss, deep-six his own virginity, and sound the depths of heartache, happiness, and the business of being human, what’s a lad to do? Poised precariously on the cusp of innocence and experience, yesterday’s daydreams and tomorrow’s decisions, Oliver Tate aims to damn the torpedoes and take the plunge.
‘Brilliant … laugh-out-loud enjoyable. The sharpest, funniest, rudest account of a troubled teenager’s coming-of-age since The Catcher in the Rye. Independent
‘A richly amusing tale of mock GCSEs, sex, death and challenging vocabulary … Excruciatingly funny incidents and cracking gags’ Time Out
‘Excellent … the wonderful, Day-Glo certainties of adolescence have rarely been so brilliantly laid out’ Independent on Sunday
‘Perfectly pitched …transplants The Catcher in the Rye to south Wales … Dunthorne can make you laugh like you did during double physics on a wet Wednesday afternoon’ Observer
‘A brilliant first novel by a young man of ferocious comic talent’ The Times Reviewer Elin Williams argued that Submarine is, “deservedly one of Wales’ best novels, simply because it just is Welsh. Dunthorne’s writing is engaging and well-crafted. Tate is one of the most believable Welsh protagonists I have come across; full of flaws and full of himself.”[3]
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Vicki James & Helen Sinclair
The next book for March 24 will be …
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
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