King of Nothing

What does it mean to be a man, or in Anton’s case, a thirteen-year-old yoot heading for manhood? Well, Anton thinks he knows. He’s hard, his mandem is hard and he’s the hardest of them all. He’s king of the school. “Nobody can square up to us here, and I prowl these corridors like my kingdom come.” His dad is in prison for a violent crime and Anton lives in the reflected glory. He is scared of nothing and no one, except, maybe, his mum and his nan. Nathanael Lessore’s story of Anton’s rite of passage from teacher’s curse to GCSE prospect is funny, thought provoking (given the activity of social media influencers like Andrew Tate) and, in Anton’s grief when his nan dies, really moving. Both the comedy and Anton’s gradual revelation that being a man is rather more complicated and might require some thoughtfulness and even tenderness relies on a growing and unlikely friendship with classmate (moist) Matthew, who is blissfully unaware of needing to fit into anyone’s idea of masculinity and is embarrassingly intent on being Anton’s best friend. The involvement of this unlikely pairing with the Happy Campers, a youth group somewhere between the Scouts and the Woodcraft Folk, strays a long way into sitcom. But there is enough recognisable reality in Anton’s life and relationships to bring the tale back home. Not that we are ever in any doubt that Anton and Matthew will be friends, that Anton will pair up with sensible Rochelle, and that he will turn his back on the mandem, whose notions of manhood are as absurd as they are toxic. The weight of the story’s message sometimes bears down too heavily, but there is a lot to enjoy, particularly in the inventiveness of Anton’s language, whose restless cultural references help us understand why his teachers might make so much effort to get him back on track.