The protagonist of this novel, originally published in 1968, is Billy Casper. But there is another Billy that can serve as a reference to locate this boy from the depressed England of the mines, it is Billy Elliot, that boy dedicated to dance in the 80s.
Both belong to one of those mining communities, both are disowned for being different. However, good old Casper is a more extreme case. It is not that the Billy in this novel cannot dance because he considers himself inappropriate for a man, his thing is that he can barely breathe in a marginal space where his mother neglects him, his brother beat him up as soon as he drinks a little alcohol, his friends make the void and at school they give it up for one more lost soul.
But in the end, the stories of the two Billys somehow come together again. Between the misery, the disappointments, the loneliness and the bitterness of a cruel childhood, it is always gratifying to see the little man leave, escape from so much annoyance.
With Billy Casper we suffer his silences that are folding him into a dark and sinister personality, full of incomprehension and hatred. Until suddenly a hawk appears. Little Casper establishes a relationship with that predatory bird in which to heal his wounds, where he can transform his fears and hatred so that fictional literature is in charge of trying to reconcile us with the world.
The question is whether, again, circumstances will allow Billy Casper to fly over his ominous reality. Or if, on the contrary, everything will end with the rapid plummet of the hawk that crashes into the hard ground.
You can buy the book kes, what was the second novel of the late English writer Barry hines, here: