Not an easy book to write, I think. Particularly one where the main characters fully inhabit the world of New Zealand in 1950s, or at least the one portrayed to us in books or the screen, albeit a bit wilder than in the film Tangiwai. It certainly hit a lot of touchstones early:

After the swearing in, a recess is called where they will get to know each other over morning tea and biscuits.

I felt tightly wound up reading This Mortal Boy. It’s tense when a marble is stolen, it’s tense over immigration:

'The country’s full of foreigners these days. Wogs everywhere. Spicks. Jews. Chinamen. All sorts, if you ask me. We were better off before the war.'

…it’s tense over flatmates, its tense with the debates at the highest and lowest levels over the death penalty, it’s tense at home, with no chance to unwind:

Stopping at the doorways of each of his sons’ rooms, he half wishes one of them will wake, so that he might suggest a cup of hot Milo, a piece of toast smothered in Marmite.

…it’s very tense over sex, well, sometimes humorous:

As if she hadn’t heard this, Sally circled the forefinger and thumb of her left hand, using the forefinger of her right to poke back and forwards through.

There’s violence, ranging from domestic against women and children:

He got hidings if he didn’t milk the cows fast enough.

…to actual homicide and the Government’s ultimate response:

'Aren’t we, as a government, not succumbing to lynch law?'

...and drinking, so much drinking, be it the five o’clock swill, a wild house party or late night reminisces while the wife waits with cabbage pooled into an amoebic slime in the oven.

Welcome to New Zealand.