The God Boy

Set in a small town in New Zealand, the story is told through the eyes of a gauche thirteen year-old boy called Jimmy Sullivan. It is the haunting tale of a young boy growing up in a catholic household, seeing things he shouldn't and struggling to cope. The book appears to be domestic in scope and provincial in vision, but by the end of the novel, the reader has encountered murder, and witnessed the warping of a promising mind and the destruction of a family. In this deceptively modest masterpiece, the cruelty beneath society's surface is revealed, all the more devastingly so through the ordinariness of the location.

About the Author

Ian Cross was born in 1925. A distinguished journalist, he edited the 'New Zealand Listener' from 1973 to 1977, when he became chairman of the Broadcasting Corporation of New Zealand.