The lost boys: how tragedy reverberates in adulthood

Robert Williams

Faber and Faber

€17.15, ebook €10.43

Review: Afric McGlinchey

This second novel by the award-winning Robert Williams demonstrates how we can be marked by a single incident.

Something terrible happens when Donald is eight years old, resulting in the death of a toddler. Perhaps the event was influenced by a row Donald had with his mother; perhaps it was an accident. The trauma distorts his memory; he is unsure what happened.

Donald and his mother are forced by vigilantes to leave town. His mother tells him ‘to keep the door shut on the past’ and not to share the secret in the new town. She doesn’t believe in therapy, so Donald deals with the emotional fallout alone. He has panic attacks, insomnia, and difficulty breathing, such that he feels he’s dying.

At the library, he obsessively researches ‘hell’, as he’s convinced he’s going there. Donald’s way of dealing with the psychological impact is to escape, through ‘vanishings’, ‘visits to other worlds and planets’. At school, he befriends Fiona, and almost tells her his secret. Then, at sixteen, while watching kids play in a primary school playground, he recognises in one boy, Jake, the same isolation and loneliness he feels himself.

Donald sees Jake at the library one day, and chats to him. Once Donald realises that the boy is neglected by his young, flighty single mother, he undertakes to take care of him, and shows him a ‘haunted’ house where they set up home, with fabricated furniture.

Here, they share their love of books by telling stories. Jake loves horror, so Donald makes up chilling tales about the house to add a frisson to their visits.

Inevitably, this secret friendship becomes known when Jake, who was dropped by a classmate, befriends him again, and the boy tells Jake that his association with Donald, who is ‘a man’, is ‘weird’. Things begin to unravel. The authorities confront Donald with the suspicious nature of this strange alliance, and, certainly, as a reader, I was uncomfortable that we make judgements too readily, based on appearances alone.

This character-driven story of a lonely childhood subtly uncovers the complex layers hidden in a boy who wants to make things better for one child, to rectify the tragic death of another. But nothing is ever that simple. Heart-rendingly poignant, How the Trouble Started reveals how isolated children and parents can be, and how difficult it is to regain normality when things have gone so horribly wrong.

Could Donald’s mother have helped him?

Was there any ‘intent’ in what happened, and is Donald at risk of a repeat tragedy? Not even Donald knows the answer to that. Ultimately, however, the one person in Donald’s life who has given him a lifeline reappears. And just, maybe, there will be salvation for the tormented boy.

A compelling, gentle, yet harrowing story. I was relieved by the ending.