THE ARCHIVIST David Pownall

(Quartet, £10)

This tells the poignant yet darkly comic story of Daniel Rogers, a working-class Liverpudlian boy sent to a strict boarding school in the south of England. Set after the Second World War, the novel charts Daniel’s attempts to find his place in society, a sense of who he is in the absence of his dead father, and a partner for his beautiful yet fiercely independent mother.

The novel’s primary strength lies in Pownall’s vivid rendering of the stifling, repressive, yet at times character-strengthening atmospheres of both the boarding school and the family home to which Daniel returns in the holidays.

Home is a tiny house in a working-class area of Liverpool, shared by his mother, younger brother, grandmother and alcoholic grandfather. In his depiction of both school and home-life, Pownall subtly interweaves historical and social detail, so that The Archivist possesses the same great, unwavering social realism that characterises novels like Angela’s Ashes.

And the quality of Pownall’s character delineation is astounding. He captures the paradoxical warmth yet emotional coldness of Daniel’s mother, around whom a perennial sadness seems to hover, and his depiction of Daniel’s abusive grandfather, AKA “God With Us”, is both harrowing and at times hugely comic.

The relationship between Daniel and Cook, the history teacher who takes the boy under his wing, is particularly moving. One might expect this novel to be a dark, disturbing, and at times depressing, but it is permeated with subtle humour, largely due to the History Boys-style public school masters, representing a distinct type of “old-school”, unintentional comedy. The matter-of-fact way Daniel considers profound and sometimes tragic issues such as family, belonging, violence and alcoholism gives the book an unexpected edge. Daniel’s quest gives structure to the novel and also intensifies this edge: he may be the archivist in his attempts to piece together his past but this is much more than a simple retreat into history. Instead, knowledge of his past enables Daniel to understand his present and his future.