Ben Stempton's Boy by Ron Yates is an edgy and tense novel—living in that fraught space between good and bad—where Yates' characters all dwell. His uncanny portrayal of the Gothic will leave you feeling you've witnessed it first hand: "...rawboned black children playing in hard-packed yards," "...saggy mother hanging out her laundry," and "a child's swimming pool, half-deflated."