Bright Mouths
On sale
4th March 2027
Price: £24.99
For fans of Whiplash and The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Sex Education and The Secret History – a blistering, queer coming-of-age drama about a high school debating team.
Seventeen-year-old Seb is back in school after a nervous breakdown. Desperate to leave his illness in the past, he falls in with the debate team, a group of boys at once dazzlingly articulate and emotionally volatile, fiercely loyal to one another and to their teacher, the enigmatic former champion John Hesketh.
Hesketh offers the boys a future brighter, richer, more alive – and competitions offer Seb the chance to be with Soren, his beautiful and neurotic debate partner. As they descend into the hyper-intellectual world of competitive debate, Hesketh pushes the boys further and harder. Buried traumas emerge, friendships fracture, and the group spirals towards catastrophe.
Tender and devastating, Bright Mouths is a queer coming-of-age novel about beauty, fear, and the dangerous allure of brilliance.
Seventeen-year-old Seb is back in school after a nervous breakdown. Desperate to leave his illness in the past, he falls in with the debate team, a group of boys at once dazzlingly articulate and emotionally volatile, fiercely loyal to one another and to their teacher, the enigmatic former champion John Hesketh.
Hesketh offers the boys a future brighter, richer, more alive – and competitions offer Seb the chance to be with Soren, his beautiful and neurotic debate partner. As they descend into the hyper-intellectual world of competitive debate, Hesketh pushes the boys further and harder. Buried traumas emerge, friendships fracture, and the group spirals towards catastrophe.
Tender and devastating, Bright Mouths is a queer coming-of-age novel about beauty, fear, and the dangerous allure of brilliance.
Reviews
Bright Mouths is a brilliant first novel set in the heady yet darkly chilling world of debating. From first to last page I was utterly enthralled. The story is forceful yet impeccably controlled and the prose is highly accomplished. Just like the narrator, I fell in love with these wild, kind and damaged late adolescent characters. The ending took my breath away. It is rare to read a debut that is this powerful. An exquisite mix of Dead Poets Society and The Secret History