Box Hill

Box Hill, subtitled A Story of Low Self-Esteem, is a short novel by the British writer Adam Mars-Jones.

The book is narrated by Colin, who is eighteen in 1975 when he meets Ray at Box Hill in Surrey, a spot known for motorcyclists on Sundays. What Colin describes as the best thing that has ever happened to him turns into a long arrangement in which Ray tells him nothing about his own life, decides how he should look and hands him on to other men in the gang. Colin's account holds both the attachment he feels and the harm that is being done to him.

The novella is concerned with consent, with homophobia and with how a person with very little self-esteem reads kindness where none is being offered, and Mars-Jones has said that he was interested in the ambiguity that Lolita creates about abuse. The narrator's willingness to describe what Ray does to him as the best thing that has ever happened to him is what makes the book difficult to read and difficult to put down.