By Ellie Keel
Publisher: Harlequin, 2024
Publisher’s blurb
We were always The Four. From our very first day at High Realms.
The four scholarship pupils. Outsiders in a world of power and privilege.
It would have made our lives a lot easier if Marta had simply pushed Genevieve out of our bedroom window that day. Certainly, it would have been tragic. She would have died instantly.
But Marta didn’t push her then, or – if you choose to believe me – at any other time. If she had, all of what we went through would not have happened.
I’ve told this story as clearly as I could – as rationally as I’ve been able, in the circumstances, to achieve. I don’t regret what we did. And I would do it all again.
Review
by Lilon Bandler
This was an Advanced Reader Copy of The Four. The dedication is yet to be included and I would be fascinated to see who Ms Keel dedicates this tale to. Someone she knows? A school friend?
Regardless – I dutifully began reading over Saturday morning breakfast. In our house this is a long slow experience with puzzles, books, newspapers, not much conversation and two cups of coffee. The book irritated me for those early chapters. I felt it was heralding its punches too often, too much and too obviously. And I was wrong on every single count.
This is a debut novel. The author, Ellie Keel, has a whole other life involving a five-year-old company that specialises in commissioning, developing, and producing new plays of the highest quality. Their work is mainly UK based. And The Four is based firmly in the UK schooling tradition.
The Four has many a twist and turn – and always another corner (and therefore page) to turn. It is written as Young Adult fiction, and I am an old woman. As I read I was trying to imagine what my teenage self would have thought of it. I was bullied at school, particularly secondary school, but it was nothing compared to the extraordinary viciousness and physical brutality included in this novel.
It’s set in an English Boarding School. As a parent, whilst I know some people’s circumstances require it, I’ve never understood the urge to send your children away for much of their childhood and adolescence. There is nothing in this book to convince me I was wrong. It describes the school, its history and its self-perpetuating mythology, and practices with a chilling clarity. Most importantly – captured here is the thinking of young adults, adolescents, that explores the need for friendship, for closeness and comfort, and for understanding, support and advice from people they can trust. I found myself according some mad decisions real respect, because the writing had placed me a position to understand the emotions, and limited choices that the central characters felt.
Keel writes with an assurance that suggests a clear memory of adolescence, its challenges, conflicts, constraints and joys. However, for those who have been abused in their adolescence or childhood, this is a hard read. And it is reasonable for it to be accompanied by a warning to that effect.
These characters are not “nice”. They are often unkind, egocentric, lacking in generosity and quite blind to the consequences of some monumental decisions and actions. However, Keel paints their complexity with a depth that allows you to forgive and become enthralled in the twists and turns of their life. The crime element of the story sometimes felt like background music to this story, but there is a crime. And it is solved by the end of the novel.
Surprises come throughout – and I rarely anticipated them, despite the repeated foreshadowing in the early chapters. I found myself reading this to the very end, every single word, and despite having to get up early the next day, stayed reading until after 2am to finish, hoping for some final resolution, some end to the redemptive narrative arc. And that ending is there – without being foppish or allowing the characters to give themselves a free pass. Worth missing sleep for.