It's just not cricket! (Gentlemen and Players - Joanne Harris)

Member Name: sunmeilan

Product:	Gentlemen and Players - Joanne Harris
Date:	15/10/06 (147 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Compelling reading

Disadvantages: Overly complicated, long-winded in parts

Although I enjoyed the film Chocolat, I’ve never been particularly drawn to read any of Joanne Harris’ books. However, as soon as I read a review of Gentlemen & Players, I knew I had to read it. So determined to read it was I that I actually bought a copy – something I rarely do these days, preferring to save paper and borrow books from libraries. Luckily, I wasn’t disappointed. There is an air of mystery about the story that drew me into it and kept me going until I had got to the end.

Roy Straitley is Latin master at St Oswald’s, a boy’s grammar school. About to retire, he is expecting to get through his final terms without much in the way of surprises. However, with the new team brings a host of new teachers, one of whom at least seems to be a trouble-maker. Strange things begin to happen. Little things at first, like the disappearance of objects. Then petty jealousies are forced to the surface and suddenly St Oswald’s doesn’t seem like the ‘nice’ place it once was.

While the members of the school are kept in the dark, the reader finds out that there is more than just a trouble-maker. There is someone with a grudge so intense that nothing short of murder will make up for the wrongs that have been done to them. Can Roy Straitley find out what is going on? Or is he responsible for the grudge in the first place?

Although not strictly crime fiction, this does exactly what I like in a book – it provides a environment in which a limited number of characters can be responsible for going on. As such, it provides the perfect background for a psychological examination of the characters in the book. One of the two narrators of the story, Roy Straitley thinks he has seen it all. Having taught in the school for years, he knows all the gossip, how the relationships between the members of staff work and he knows how to deal with the boys. The sudden realisation that there is someone in the school, probably on the school staff, who wants to harm the school’s reputation and that of all those in it, is a shock to his system and he finds it hard to handle. Although Joanne Harris is obviously a woman and young to boot, I think she put together the character of an elderly schoolmaster, set in his ways, very well. Roy is definitely the mainstay of the book; although he is not perfect, my sympathies were with him throughout the book and I found him a totally natural character.

The ghostly presence of the ‘trouble-maker’ is a real treat for any lover of psychological thrillers. Little bits of information are given away about him throughout the book, starting with his childhood, which was clearly not easy. Although he tells his part of the story in his own words, the information we are given is leaked out slowly and we are always kept waiting in the knowledge that something more important is going to be explained at a later point in the book. This is a carefully drawn-out character that actually didn’t inspire all that much sympathy in me. There is a real feeling of pettiness in his reaction to what happens to him and my sympathies definitely laid with Roy Straitley.

There was a certain amount of mysteriousness about the new schoolteachers for obvious reasons. We are never quite sure until the last few pages which of them, if indeed any, are the guilty party. Little clues are given and you suspect you know the answer, only for your ideas to be ripped up a couple of chapters later.

Conclusion
So was the book as good as I had been led to believe? I definitely loved it. It intrigued me from page one and I struggled to put it down. I love books like this that keep me on my toes. Nothing was quite as it seems and every chapter brought something to my attention that I hadn’t quite expected. Overall, this is a very strong book, perfect for fans of mysteries. Not having read any of Joanne Harris’ other books, I can’t really compare it, although I suspect from having seen Chocolat and from what I have read that it is quite different. Even though I loved this book, I can’t say that it has inspired me to read any of the fruit books.

It wasn’t perfect though. There were a couple of things that didn’t quite sit right with me. One was that the third quarter of the novel was very drawn out and could definitely have been quite a bit shorter than it was. It wasn’t tedious enough to make me want to put it down, but I did find myself getting frustrated because I really wanted to know what the outcome was going to be. Another niggle was that Joanne Harris seemed to be a bit too clever at times. This book is very well put together, but the story at times was so intricate and complicated that I had to really concentrate to have even a hope in hell of working out what was going on. This was exacerbated by the fact that both of the main characters tell their story in the first person, which means it wasn’t always immediately clear who was telling the story. Finally, I had guessed before the end who the ‘trouble-maker’ was. This wasn’t the end of the world though and I actually finished the book feeling extremely satisfied that I had managed to work it all out.

In conclusion then, yes, I did enjoy it and despite my niggles, I can highly recommend it. I love books that keep me going into the early hours of the morning (even if my work the next day doesn’t) and it deserves five stars.

I bought the book from play.com for ₤5.49. Published by Black Swan, it has 506 pages. ISBN: 0552770026.

Summary: Compelling reading, highly recommended