If John Boyne blames anyone for toxic masculinity, it’s bad fathers

The author shows his eye for the topical in this novella centred on a rape trial but a lack of ambiguity makes Earth feel like an open and shut case

Lack of mystery: John Boyne’s Earth is a compelling read, but all the detail is laid out for the reader

Katy Hayes

There are some writers who operate on an ethereal plane, creating work that may be tinged with genius or madness, who worry their prose with obsessive attention and create chiselled sentences with lyrical twirls. John Boyne is not like that. His style is plain and honest. As a novelist, he is a strategist; his career is like a campaign, or series of campaigns. He is engaged with the ebb and flow of current debate and ideas.

His most emotionally impactful book, The Heart’s Invisible Furies (2017), is an episodic chart of gay life in modern Ireland over decades; his very funny The Echo Chamber (2021) is a broad satire about social media. He often reinvents himself and his style. This is not a criticism, just a description of the type of literary animal he is: a chameleon, a stalking fox, an opportunist. There is something of the journalist or sociologist about much of his output and this new work is right up that alley.