by Lloyd Jones
First published 2024
Seven-year-old Lloyd Jones follows his father up into the rugby grandstand for the first time. From this high perch, the boy believes he can see everything important. The green field below seems to stretch from suburban New Zealand all the way to the wider world beyond. The grandstand becomes his lens for understanding life as Jones grows from a wild boy who rides dogs and falls from trees into a young writer testing himself against foreign places and languages. He destroys classroom ukuleles and learns to sail small boats. The airless grievances of small-town life push him to travel widely, searching for his identity through difference. Years later, Jones returns to reassemble his coordinates and reclaim the local view. The old grandstand has been torn down for houses, but something remains of that elevated perspective where a boy first glimpsed the field of possibility.
Genres: literary-fiction, coming-of-age, memoir, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, self-discovery
Setting: New Zealand, Suburban New Zealand
Period: 20th-century
104 pages · Kindle Edition · Upswell