Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh review

The Guardian

16-04-2025

I wouldn't wish the pains of being a 17-year-old boy on my worst enemy. The awkward longing, the spots, the insecurity: it's enough to cringe yourself into oblivion. For John Patrick McHugh, however, it is a rich seam to squeeze – not only for humour, but for a nuanced examination of burgeoning masculinity.
John Masterson, the main character of McHugh's debut novel, is in the limboland of a post-exams summer, playing football and hooking up with a slightly older colleague at the hotel where he has a part-time job. In this way, Fun and Games stalks the same emotional and geographical territory as McHugh's 2021 short-story collection, Pure Gold, also set on an island off the Irish mainland in County Mayo, and also knee-deep in the turmoil of young lads, painted with tenderness and menace in equal measure.
Here, though, we are pinned specifically in time, in the summer of 2009. It's an age of pre-smartphone texts, with low-res images pinging from pocket to pocket. One image in particular has caused John no small share of distress. Prior to the events of the novel, his mother's breasts 'floated around the Island' – a wonderfully lyrical image to describe a sext gone wrong. John's dad has moved out as a result, and John has acquired the nickname 'Tits' from his male friends. I say friends, but the borders between amity and enmity are at the heart of the novel, particularly in the relationship between John and his supposed best friend, Studzy.
Studzy, John and a couple of other boys in his year have been accepted on to the island's senior Gaelic football team. They find themselves among adult men, and their jostling to place themselves within the group as they move towards the championship forms one of two main threads to Fun and Games. The other is John's relationship with his 19-year-old colleague, Amber. The pair have already begun a tentative sexual relationship, although the prospect of full intercourse is what motivates John to keep it going through the summer. 'Sex was a league table,' the narrator tells us, and achieving victory is a toxic little engine that powers John's motivations in a way that's all the more shocking for being understated.
John's shifting feelings for Amber, and how they play into wider power dynamics in his life, form the emotional and dramatic core of the book. There are some deliciously agonising scenes of laboured texting and tension at the hotel as the lovers navigate the uncertainties of their relationship. But it's the male relationships that are most vivid: the complex bullying and reliance on each other, nuanced and knotty. John's mixed feelings for Studzy, who is more athletic, more outgoing, but less academic and, it is implied, poorer, raise questions of class. How does dominance in one kind of game stack up against the opportunities provided by wealth in the broader social arena? John feels protective of Studzy at the same time as being pushed around by him, a capricious balance of masculine forces that changes as their wider group teeter on a world beyond Leaving Cert results.
When these elements come together, the novel excels. A particularly tense scene between John, Amber and a manipulative Studzy is a standout. It's a shame, then, that the final third somewhat loses its nerve in challenging that central triangle, in favour of letting other narrative threads play out more or less as expected. Amber also at times comes across more as a vehicle for testing John's desires and prejudices than as a rounded character in her own right. But McHugh layers John's mind with care. For example, during a practice match in the July sun, we're told that 'the ball was rimmed violently, then blurred to a mauve colour, then hoary, and then it was that familiar white once more'. Later we learn of John's interest in art history, his feeling for colour and light; a meeting of perspective and character that McHugh handles deftly.
John's way of seeing the world is shown to be sensitive, impressionable to others, challenged as our teenage protagonist faces the consequences of his actions. 'Until someone gets hurt' may be the implied response to the novel's title, and indeed there are pains aplenty in the agonies of John's late adolescence. But in McHugh's hands there is also warmth and sensitivity, and a skilful humour that sends up the rituals of a schoolboy's final summer while shining light on the cruelty and vulnerability of young men.
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Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh is published by 4th Estate (£16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.