A plot which is as slippery as a nest of snakes this book is about systemic abuse in the private school sector. This is what I felt ‘The Four’ could have been, crossed with Lorenzo Carcaterra’s ‘Sleepers’ an altogether unsettling experience. Please check content and trigger warnings as this comes with the full contingent of bells and whistles. 

Told from the grown up perspective of Brendan, the book goes back to the 80s to recount the horrors that happened to him and his close knit group of friends, at the prestigious boarding school, Torburton Hall. What follows is a legal thriller when one man takes on an institution with a reputation for turning out society’s most elite. 

A gut-puncher or a book, hard to stomach in places, the modern-day legal thriller aspect levelled out the harrowing past timeline. I felt we were asked to suspend belief once or twice too often like a snake shedding its skin, and left a little house cleaning to be done by the reader in the authors absence. 

This book had all the components to be a 5 star book, and perhaps in another author’s sensitively handled hands this story could have left me as a non functioning wreck on a kitchen floor. It went a little wonky towards the end, and I think this snake might have ended up biting its own handler.