’I’m a God Boy, Sister,’ I said. ‘You don’t have to worry about me, I’m a God boy.’The story of tough little Jimmy Sullivan, ‘a boy that God had his eye on’, is as vivid and relevant now as when it was first published.'I recently glanced again through both this book and A Catcher in the Rye, and I really think that, for a New Zealander anyway, The God Boy stands up better than A Catcher in the Rye.' (Gordon McLauchlan)’It is moving, exciting, amusing — superlatively readable.’ (E.H. McCormick, Landfall)’Its theme is relevant to issues that continue to trouble the New Zealand community; its material, densely local as it is, is triumphantly handled so as to indicate wider implications; its characterisation is individual, fresh and memorable; and the art of telling is unusually disciplined and subtle.’ (Professor Joan Stevens)