Snake Boy

In this impressive first novel, Austrian writer Peter Truschner takes a sharp look back at a childhood and puberty spent in the hell of the provinces, and a time when the world suddenly seemed to spin faster.
The narrator, the son of an unmarried mother, grows up on a ramshackle farm in Austria in the seventies, sheltered by his grandmother's affection, and both attracted and repelled by the rough, instinctive physicality of his grandfather.
A "tumbledown life" characterised by hardship and poverty and a deeply felt lack of family security, but also by playful discovery of the other gender. When his mother finally comes to take him to the city, her much-longed-for presence awakens rivalry and a desire for independence, rather than the anticipated happiness.