The Boys

The Boys is a tremendous novel - compelling, vibrant, and dazzling. These characters are charming and hilarious and doing their best to get on. I worried for them and I loved them and I miss them now that they’re gone. Leo Robson writes with a dry hilarity and crackling intelligence. What an arrival. – Brandon Taylor, Booker shortlisted author of Real LifeWith a cast of maverick characters that all want the last word, The Boys is the kind of novel whose world you feel remorse at having to leave. It is many things: a comic come-along-for-the-ride; a moving exploration of how grief hits, shifts, evolves; a detective story behind understanding complicated feelings. It’s very human, very real but also, fundamentally, extremely fun to read. – Rebecca Watson, author of Little ScratchLeo Robson’s The Boys is written with such a brisk, charming sense of humour that you almost don’t notice how touching it is. There’s something delightful on every page. – Lauren Oyler, author of Fake AccountsTender and acerbic by turn, indisputably British, Leo Robson’s The Boys yields its secrets as particular pleasures to be acquired one by one; as if the reader, like the novel’s sharply observant narrator, were making their way through a labyrinth, entangled in familial wonders and revelations – Joyce Carol OatesFull of joyously messy characters and acute observations, The Boys is a brilliant and witty portrait of a family fractured across generations and continents. In the days after finishing the book, I found myself passing off its insights as though they were my own. – Joe DunthorneThe Boys is a London novel, site specific, exact in its textures. Its protagonist is a born noticer. He is both lonely and sociable, needy and self-contained. Summer days and new relationships are rendered with a grace that is lyrical at times but also ironic and comic, in a tone perfectly-pitched. – Colm TóibínThis is a cracking debut from cultural journalist Robson, an exercise in sparkling repartee amid the North London summer doldrums. * SAGA Magazine *Robson describes millennial unease with wit and compassion. His unconventional household is memorable and he offers perceptive observations on generational difference, family ties, friendship, losing parents and becoming a parent * Observer *An emotionally intelligent deep dive into sibling relationships, where love, rivalry and connection are all examined. Funny and wise * Daily Mail *Enterprising and spritely comic novel … I enjoyed it immensely – Alex Clark * New Statesman *Engaging and smartly ironic debut * Independent *Luminous, eccentric and memorable * Guardian *A nostalgic read, full of delicious individual snippets * Something Curated *The Boys luxuriates in a kind of North London nostalgia, decisively slotting into the traditions and tropes of a distinctly British literature … technical perfection * The Irish Times *I have read it before, and am returning to it for the velocity of the sentences and the comedy of the idioms * Frances Wilson (TLS Summer Reads 2025) *A subtle book … But there’s a lot of pleasure in that subtlety: dryly witty sentences that dwell on the smallest details of social interaction; literature’s best (and probably first) running gag about Alt-J. A great entry in the underappreciated canon of hanging-out novels * GQ *

Leo Robson is a journalist. He is a contributing editor at Granta and assistant editor at Literary Review. His writing on culture and sport has appeared in a wide range of publications, including the New Statesman, the New Left Review, the London Review of Books, and the New Yorker. He lives in London.

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