by John Boyne
Part of The Elements, book 2
First published 2024
Evan Keogh grew up on an island and left it behind, telling himself a new life was possible. Now he sits in a courtroom watching two famous footballers face charges of sexual assault. A string of explicit text messages has made the case a tabloid spectacle. Evan knows what happened that night. He was there. As the trial moves forward, Evan turns over the years between then and now. He had talent with a ball but wanted to make art. He built a career in a sport that has little room for a gay man. He kept that to himself and kept moving. Each compromise led to the next one. The verdict belongs to the jury. But Evan carries his own reckoning. He has to decide whether the choices he made, the silences he kept, the version of himself he put forward to the world, add up to a life he can stand behind. John Boyne, whose books have sold in the millions, puts one man's private guilt against a very public trial and asks what it costs to finally tell the truth.
Genres: fiction, drama, literary-fiction, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction
Vibes: intimate, introspective, morally-complex, tension-filled, thought-provoking
Tropes: dual-timeline, hidden-identity, moral-reckoning, unreliable-narrator
Setting: island, courtroom
Period: contemporary
176 pages · Hardcover · Doubleday
Content warnings: homophobia, sexual-assault