The Trouble With Sister Francis by Matt Coyne

 

The long school summer holidays are looming, and in an effort to avoid the local bully, four young boys are persuaded to join a boys' club at the local church. 

Author Matt Coyne's debut novel, Frank And Red, is one of my favourite books. I regularly recommend it to people, and I've yet to hear from anyone who didn't enjoy it. So I had high expectations for his second novel, The Trouble With Sister Francis. 

As the story opens in 1981, we meet four young boys who live on the outskirts of Sheffield. Richie, Stan, Kenny, and Bennett are approaching the end of their time at primary school and a future that will see them separated as they move on to secondary school. Weekends and school holidays see them hanging about in the park until the local bully scares them off. With little else to do, they decide to check out the newly reopened boys' club at the nearby church. The club doesn't quite live up to expectations when they first arrive, and the nun who is in charge, Sister Francis, certainly isn't your stereotypical representative of the church.

At its heart, this is a story about camaraderie. Each of the boys is different. Richie is the natural leader, the one the others defer to. Stan is a bit of a wimp, terrified of everything. Bennett is just different, obviously neurodivergent long before it was identified. And Kenny, he's always the first to arrive and the last to leave, desperately avoiding his terrible home life. Kenny tells tall tales to deflect from what happens at home, and his friends just accept them, all while knowing what he has to put up with. Whenever Kenny was embellishing the truth, I was convinced he was going to grow up to become the Kenny Senior character in Phoenix Nights.

Alongside the story of the boys in 1981, there is a secondary story when Richie uncovers a journal written by Reginald Hartfeld, a fifteen-year-old who is evacuated from London to Yorkshire during the war. We hear from a lonely Reginald, miles from home, who becomes one of the original boys' club members and falls in love. I loved seeing the pieces of ephemera that were included with the journal. How this story connected to the club in 1981 was at the forefront of my mind however.

I found myself snorting with laughter repeatedly at the antics only 11-year-old boys can get up to, and nostalgia hit me on a regular basis; the smell of the school Banda machine and the description of Saturday nights spent as a family were very evocative. There is a confrontation towards the end where I could feel my chest getting tight as I read, and afterwards, I wanted to punch the air and scream "YES!" as I was so invested in the story and characters. There are also lots of bittersweet moments. I certainly didn't expect the tears towards the end. By the time I'd finished, I was ready to go right back to the beginning and start again.

The Trouble With Sister Francis by Matt Coyne will be published on 27th August 2026 in hardback, ebook, and audio format. My thanks to NetGalley and Headline for a review copy.

Author Details

Matt Coyne is from Sheffield, South Yorkshire. In September 2015, his life was turned upside down by the arrival of his son, Charlie. Three months into parenthood, he took to social media to write about his experience as a clueless first-time dad. Within days, his post about surviving the early months of parenthood was shared by millions around the world. Following this, Matt created his popular blog Man vs Baby, which now has more than 500,000 followers. He is the author of two Sunday Times bestselling books – Dummy and Man vs. Toddler – both based on Man vs Baby and has written for the Guardian, Telegraph, Private Eye and GQ. The Trouble with Sister Francis is Matt’s second novel, following his acclaimed, award-winning debut Frank and Red. Matt lives in Sheffield with his son Charlie, his partner Lyndsay and a Jack Russell terrier with ‘issues’ called Popcorn.