Containing sad, happy and thoughtful moments along with subtle humour I found areas of it slow and depressing. Reading it left me, in a way, angry. The fact that it concentrated on a school for the 'elite' rather than a secondary modern, what I recalled of my schooldays didn't match the storyline in the slightest. The violence that the pickets experienced wasn't all one sided so maybe this book was a little bias. It was certainly worth reading.