The Boy in the Field begins like most great whodunits: with a body. Siblings Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan Lang stumble upon the body of an unconscious boy in an empty field on their walk home from school one day. Through their efforts at getting help, the three siblings manage to save the life of this boy in the field, schoolboy Karel Lustig, brutally stabbed by a complete stranger who gave him a ride home from school. The children become involved in the search for Karel’s attacker, especially Matthew, who investigates with the help of the lead detective, Hugo Price, and Karel’s older bother, desperate to find Karel’s attacker to assuage his guilt for forgetting to pick up Karel from school on the day of the attack.
Meanwhile, the children are dealing with matters of instability in their own personal lives. They begin realizing that something is amiss in their parents marriage, and the revelation of their father’s affair forces the children to contemplate what the destruction of their family unit would look like. Duncan, the youngest of the bunch, and a talented painter, also begins to search for his birth mother, which he has to assure his adopted family won’t completely destabilize their relationship with them. While the Lang’s are supportive of his decision to find his “first mother”, each of them still wonders whether Duncan is unsatisfied with his adoptive family. Zoe is also on a journey self discovery, beginning an affair with a much older American grad student, one that teaches her about trust, jealousy, and power.
The novel is suffused with an atmosphere of Romanticism, as Livesey uses Duncan’s perspective as an painter to emphasize the aesthetics of the narrative. In the first scene when the children stumble upon Karel’s body, Duncan imagines it from the point of view of a bird flying above them, “Looking down at the boy lying in the grass, his blue shirt and black shorts and red legs ending in black trainers, slightly dusty, pointing at the sky. And the three of them in their white shirts, kneeling beside him, keeping vigil.” Livesey’s painterly attention to detail, color, and mood elevate the whodunit plot into a fascinating and foreboding mystery with deep attention to character development. The premise of the novel is interesting enough in itself, crime fiction is a classic genre for a reason, but Livesey weaves the mystery into even more fascinating contemplations of family, intimacy, coming of age, and belonging. Zoe’s first forays into adult intimacy and romantic love, Duncan’s quest to find his birth mother, and Matthew’s investigation of the crime all bring the children back in different ways to their discovery of Karel’s body. Each sibling processes this event differently, and for each of them it brings up questions about violence, companionship, and vulnerability.
The Boy in the Field is a gentle and nuanced portrayal of the relationships that endure traumas such as breaches of trust or random acts of violence. Throughout the novel, relationships are repeatedly tested, as outside forces impose themselves on the intimacy shared between partners, families, and friends, but they ultimately prove to be durable enough to survive the strain. While the novel certainly doesn’t shy away from tragedy or loss, it is ultimately a hopeful portrayal of the human capability for compassion and kindness. Livesey has created a haunting but altogether stunning world in this novel, populated by characters able to both hurt and ultimately redeem each other.
Further Reading: Two of Livesey’s previous novels, The Flight of Gemma Hardy and The House on Fortune Street, are great places to start.