Jean by Madeleine Dunnigan

A Guardian book of the day

A debut to look out for in 2026 for the Guardian, Stylist and Independent

A Foyles Top Ten Reads of February

Set over one hot summer, a startlingly assured debut about the kinds of love that break us and make us whole.

One afternoon in 1976, teenagers Jean and Tom share an almost imperceptible look across the grounds of Compton Manor, a boarding school for boys with problems. Their gaze marks a secret intimacy, one defined as much by violence as by friendship and desire. As the boys’ connection deepens, so too does the risk that surrounds it. Jean – son of a single mother, Jewish, on a scholarship, forever an outsider – wonders whether the relationship might offer a way out of a life marked by alienation. But what if the only true path to freedom is to disappear altogether?

Spellbinding and evocative, Jean is a meditative narrative of loss and escape distilled into the heartrending story of an intense and dangerous adolescent love.