marcm's Full Review: Thomas H. Cook - The Chatham School Affair
Stunning. A curiously macabre tale of growing up gone horribly wrong. Cook’s narrator is the protagonist who has grown old, but has never made peace with the tragedy of his adolescence. The story is set in the Cape Cod of 1926, and takes place principally over the course of a school year at the academy where the narrator’s father serves as headmaster. At its start, our narrator meets the new art teacher, Miss Channing, who he will soon come to idolize, but whose actions and motives he will only understand when it is far too late to do any good.
The narrative voice is a bit archaic, but completely in tune with the gruesome events set in the 1926 Cape Cod, and the stunted and isolated life we come to understand that our narrator has led. Early on , the narrative is peppered with warnings of tragedy and guilt to be revealed. The overall effect reminds the reader of Poe, and leads one to wonder if the story will slide into a creaky predictability. No need to fear. Cook warns you of the horrors ahead, which come to seem fully inevitable, but somehow you can’t guess what’s coming.
It is Cook’s genius that his story gradually reveals new layers of complexity in his characters, originally unimagined by the narrator. Indeed, it is the narrator’s inability to perceive the real motivations and torment of the adults around him that propels the story to its horrifying conclusion. The narrator learns important lessons, but each one is learned too late to avoid the gut wrenching guilt that will distort his entire life.
If the story were only clever, well told, and well plotted, I would recommend it, but not as urgently. The main characters here are fully realized, decent people. The narrator’s only immediately apparent flaw is his naivete, and yet the mixture of people and circumstances spells utter disaster. The story has a moral dimension that haunts you long after you finish reading. People’s true selves must be respected, but the real nature of those around you may remain unguessed. The story leaves you utterly convinced that life’s lessons can easily come at too high a price.
Attorney Henry Griswald has a secret: the truth behind the tragic events the world knew as the Chatham School Affair, the controversial tragedy that d...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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