One afternoon in 1976 teenagers Jean and Tom share an almost imperceptible look across the
grounds of Compton Manor a boarding school for boys with problems. Their gaze marks a secret
intimacy one defined as much by violence as by friendship and desire. As the boys' connection
deepens so too does the risk that surrounds it. Jean - son of a single mother Jewish on a
scholarship forever an outsider - wonders whether the relationship might offer a way out of a
life marked by alienation. But what if the only true path to freedom is to disappear
altogether? Spellbinding and evocative Jean is a meditative narrative of loss and escape
distilled into the heartrending story of an intense and dangerous adolescent love.
