The Midnight Gang

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of bullying, illness, ableism, and substance use.

Protagonist Tom is 12 and attends St. Willet’s Boarding School for Boys, a private academy in a rural location outside of London. He sees his parents only on breaks from school when he travels to the various “desert countries” where they live for Tom’s father’s job. While his father’s salary is significant, and while his parents give him extravagant gifts, they do not seem to know how to spend time with Tom. At the start of the novel, Tom is a timid and unassertive boy. He is not athletic and does not have close friends at his school; the other boys do not consider him as “posh” (high-class) as they believe themselves to be.

In addition, Tom has found himself in some very embarrassing circumstances at school, such as sneezing on the headmaster, sending his pottery flying off the wheel in art class, and slipping on gravy in the cafeteria. He is bullied by others too: Once, “some of the older boys hid his games kit [gym clothes] so he had to play rugby in his underpants” (68). In fact, the boarding school is a lonely environment for Tom, and he reflects several times on how he often wants the days there to tick by faster so that he can move on to adulthood: “[H]e longed to leave childhood behind forever.