“Bole’s breathtaking naivety is a source both of humour and of quite
striking observations of the Martian-sends-a-postcard-home kind, while
his inarticulate pain achieves a shocking simplicity verging on the
poetic. This is an extraordinary debut.”
Christina Patterson, The
Observer
“Daren King’s debut, Boxy an Star, was far and away the best of the
novels about the ecstasy generation which proliferated in the 1990s.”
Laurence Phelan, The Independent
“Boxy an Star is a total success: finely paced, wildly funny, deeply
touching. I relished the lovely Joyce-meets-Estuary coinages. Subtler,
and harder, is the inch-perfect comic timing that makes many scenes
sound like some delirious encounter between PG Wodehouse and William
S Burroghs.”
Boyd Tonkin, The Independent