Event overview
Madeleine Dunnigan and Thomas McMullan read from and discuss their new books
Join us for a discussion of two atmospheric, simmering novels.
JEAN: 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.
GROUNDWATER: John and Liz have left the city behind to move to a remote house on the shores of the lake. Though the house is barely unpacked, Liz's sister, with her children and her husband, have come to visit for the August bank holiday weekend.
Over the course of a hot, slow weekend, tensions simmer; things go unsaid – between the two couples, between the two sisters. Their time together is punctured by visits from Jim, the solitary local warden for the area; and a group of students camping nearby draw closer and closer, finally infiltrating the house – and bringing their own tensions and hierarchies with them.
As the weekend draws to a close, the landscape reveals a violence that has long lain hidden – and the summer builds to its harrowing climax.
Madeleine Dunnigan is a writer from and based in London. She was the Jill Davis Fellow on the New York University Fiction MFA (2022–24). Jean is her debut.
Thomas McMullan is the author of Groundwater (Bloomsbury, 2025) and The Last Good Man (Bloomsbury, 2020), which won the 2021 Betty Trask Prize. His short fiction has been published in Ploughshares, The Dublin Review, Granta, 3:AM Magazine, Lighthouse and Best British Short Stories. He is a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at King’s College London.
This event is free and open to all.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 11 Feb 2026 | 5:00pm - 6:00pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
