The Boy Who Wanted Peace

by George Friel

The

Genres: Fiction

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

George Friel (1910 - 1975) was a Scottish writer. He was born in Glasgow as the fourth of seven children, and was educated at St. Mungo's Academy and the University of Glasgow. After a period of service in the army, he spent the rest of his life working as a teacher in Glasgow.

Friel's fourth novel, Mr. Alfred M.A., made it to the "100 Best Scottish Books of all Time" list.

Reviews

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second novel from long-forgotten Scottish novelist George Friel is an off-kilter tale of a frustrated precocious teenager (Percy) stuck in a working class home who longs for a literary life of loafing, reading, and writing poetry (the very spit of my young self at the same age, minus the poetry), who cuts around with a fanciful gang of youths in a school cellar where his late father used to work. Stumbling over the spoils of a bank robbery stashed away in the cellar, Percy attempts to exert his authority over the younger boys, among them the brawler Savage, who craftily squirrels the money away on the sly. A curious, light-hearted tale of ordinary weirdness on the streets of 1960s Glasgow, the novel is a charming and vibrant read with an elegant and droll prose style.

[Cody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Saying that this is the least of the Friel novels I’ve read thus far is anything but damning. The primary difference herein is that Friel, though certainly poking a nubbin or two into the bleak, does not yet fully dive headlong into the wonderful, pitch-black darkness that arrives with his very next offering. His capacity for bringing such ostensible opposites, joy and abject terror, together with nary a seam showing is a minor miracle on the scale of, say, St. Denis carrying his own decapitated head through the streets of Montmartre to his grave several miles afoot in gay Paris. Friel, like St. Denis, simply shows in The Boy Who Wanted Peace that no one can be Moses all the time. I mean, he’s still carrying his own fucking head, for chrissakes.

[Carine · Rating 3 out of 5]

In which a gang of boys finds thousands and thousands of pounds hidden in the cellar of their school.

Well-written, entertaining, and gives a really good sense of tenement life in Glasgow. The last seven pages or so come as a shock. Wonder why this hasn't been turned into a film...

[Lysergius · Rating 3 out of 5]

Young Percy Phinn, budding intellectual, poet without a poem, who attends orchestral concerts because "music always made his mind wander... He felt liberated. So while the soprano got lost in 'Cum Sancto Spiritu' he plunged contentedly through the jungle of his grievances." Mainly being he doesn't have the peace necessary for him to write poems and do poet-type things.