Character Analysis
(Avoiding Spoilers)
Living… in bleak and rainy Swansea, Wales, with a depressed father and a possibly unfaithful mother. The fact that his parents are not making love as much as they used to is an issue of great concern to Oliver, who believes that they might separate. To make matters worse, his mother’s ex-boyfriend Graham has moved in next door and seems to have rekindled the relationship. Thus, Oliver’s life in his little house is fraught with dread and suspicion.
Profession… high school student. A frequently bullied high-school student, to be more specific. When you’re 15 and small or weird, you’re bound to get pushed around a bit in the hallways. Oliver is both small and weird, so he gets pushed around a lot.
Interests… daydreaming, light arson, and monitoring the dimmer switch in his parents’ bedroom to ascertain whether or not they have been intimate. Again, Oliver is a bit weird.
Relationship Status… crushing on Jordana Bevin. According to Oliver, her “only real flaws are her sporadic bouts of eczema. Other than that she has many qualities.” Oliver has admired Jordana for a while now, especially the ways in which she casually bullies other classmates and smokes too many cigarettes. He firmly believes that a relationship with her is likely as she, too, is mildly unpopular.
Challenge… preventing his mother from having an affair with Graham the mystic, and persuading Jordana into a wonderful evening of lovemaking. In addition to enhancing his own love life, Oliver looks to improve his mother’s and father’s as well. He frequently encourages Lloyd Tate to show some gusto and ardor towards his wife. Unfortunately, no persuasive technique that Oliver has deployed thus far has worked, but he’s not going to give up. He doesn’t want to be from a broken home, “wearing tracksuit tops instead of coats and taking gateway drugs in shopping malls.”
Personality… troubled, eccentric, and ridiculously well-spoken. Oliver Tate has the vocabulary of William Shakespeare combined with the angst of a typical 15-year old boy, and then some. His mother’s possible infidelity, his father’s depression, Graham the ninja psychic – almost everything worries Oliver and there doesn’t seem to be anyone he can turn to for help. Maybe Jordana Bevin? Nah, better not. She might burn him with a cigarette.
Get to Know him in...
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Oliver Tate lives in the seaside town of Swansea, Wales. At once a self-styled social scientist, a spy in the baffling adult world surrounding him, and a budding, hormone-driven emotional explorer, Oliver is stealthily (and perhaps a bit more nervously than he'd ever admit) nosing his way forward through the murky and uniquely perilous waters of adolescence. His objectives? Uncovering the secrets behind his parents' teetering marriage, unraveling the mystery that is his alluring and equally quirky classmate Jordana Bevan, and understanding where he fits in among the pansexuals, Zoroastrians, and other mystifying, fascinating beings in his orbit. "It's in my interests to know about my parents' mental problems, he reasons. Thus, when he discovers that his affable dad is quietly struggling with depression, Oliver marshals all the daytime-TV pop-psychology wisdom at his command—not to mention his formidable, uninhibited powers of imagination—in order to put things right again. But a covert expedition into the mysterious territory of middle-aged malaise is bound to be tricky business for a teenager with more to learn about the agonies and ecstasies of life than a pocket thesaurus and his worldly school chum Chips can teach him. Ready or not, however, Oliver is about to get a crash course. His awkwardly torrid and tender relationship with Jordana is hurtling at the speed of teenage passion toward the inevitable magic moment— and whatever lies beyond. And his boy-detective exploits have set him on a collision course with the New Age old flame who's resurfaced in his mother's life to lead her into temptation with lessons in surfing, self-defense and maybe seduction. Struggling to buoy his parents' wedded bliss, deep-six his own virginity, and sound the depths of heartache, happiness, and the business of being human, what's a lad to do? Poised precariously on the cusp of innocence and experience, yesterday's daydreams and tomorrow's decisions, Oliver Tate aims to damn the torpedoes and take the plunge.
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15-year-old deep-thinking Welsh schoolboy, Oliver Tate struggles to initiate and maintain a relationship with Jordana, his devilish, dark-haired classmate at their Swansea high school. As his parents' marriage begins to fall apart, similar problems arise in his relationship with Jordana.
