Best Served Cold (Gentlemen and Players - Joanne Harris)

Member Name: TheChocolateLady

Product:	Gentlemen and Players - Joanne Harris
Date:	23/02/07 (515 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Wonderful characters, plot, writing

Disadvantages: Didn't know who was talking to begin with

"The place is St Oswald's, an old and long-established boys' grammar school in the north of England. A new year has just begun, and for the staff and boys of the School, a wind of unwelcome change is blowing. Suits, paperwork and Information Technology rule the world; and Roy Straitley, Latin master, eccentric, and veteran of St Oswald's, is finally – reluctantly – contemplating retirement. But beneath the little rivalries, petty disputes and everyday crises of the School, a darker undercurrent stirs. And a bitter grudge, hidden and carefully nurtured for fifteen years, is about to erupt. Who is "Mole", the mysterious insider, whose cruel practical jokes are gradually escalating …? And how can an old and half-forgotten scandal become the stone that brings down a giant?" This is a partial quote of the plot of Joanne Harris' newest novel, Gentlemen and Players, as described on her web page (http://www.joanne-harris.co.uk/), and what a story it is!

While Joanne Harris may not be the greatest novelist around these days, she does have a very good knack for telling a compelling story. Those of you familiar with her name will recall her most famous novel, "Chocolat", which was a major motion picture of the same name. "Chocolat", while fun, wasn't her best piece of fiction, nor was its (semi-sequel) "Blackberry Wine". Personally, I preferred the last of that trilogy, "Five Quarters of the Orange" to the other two. Of course, this made me feel that her writing skills were improving. I was later disappointed with her collection of short stories ("Jigs & Reels"), and (possibly incorrectly) warned off reading "Coastliners" but I still hadn't given up on Ms. Harris. With "Gentlemen and Players", however, I think she's taken her storytelling to new heights, and this is by far her best work.

What I've always appreciated about Harris' work is how strongly she builds her characters and that she uses them to drive the story rather than the other way around. In order to do this, Joanne takes a first person voice and speaks to the readers through the characters. While this is easy to do when you're writing through the eyes of only one character, it is more difficult when doing the same through two or more persons. One way is to make the "voices" so distinctive that it is impossible to mix them up. In "Gentelmen and Players" Harris took the easier method of indicating the character speaking at the start of each chapter heading. Mind you, her method of indication was more subtle than naming the person – Harris instead used a symbol as a code – in this case, a drawing of a pawn (as in the game of chess) – where the white one was the protagonist and the black one was the antagonist. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this when I first started reading the book and until I figured this out, I was a bit puzzled by the whole thing. Thankfully, if you decide to read this, you won't have that problem since I've given that clue away to you. Don't worry, telling you this won't spoil your reading – in fact, I think I would have preferred to have known this before I began this book.

There is one obvious advantage to using two first-person narratives, and that is the writer can use one character to describe the physical aspects of the other. This is in lieu of third-person descriptions, which are often boring and usually distract from the characters and progress of the story. Harris does this so well that if Roy Straitley was a real person, I'm sure I could pick him out of a crowd. I could say she is less successful with her antagonist, except for the fact that she needed to keep as much of an air of mystery about the "Mole" as was humanly possible – since some of the mystery behind this 'trouble-maker' is even withheld from the readers until near the end of the book.

If I'm starting to sound illusive here, there is a reason for it. While previous novels by Harris have concentrated on conflicts that were – for the most part – out in the open, this book borders on being a mystery novel. Mind you, since the antagonist speaks directly to the reader, and from early on in the book, lays out the plan for St. Oswald's destruction as it occurs, the truth behind the problems is kept from the other characters while very little is kept from the reader. Of course, with a good mystery, there are always things that one guesses at one point or another; only to find out we were wrong as the action progresses, and this is no exception.

This venture into the mystery (or even crime fiction) genre seems a step in a slightly different direction than she had in "Chocolat" and "Blackberry Wine". Those books used a good deal of 'magical reality' to help wield events and people, which set her apart from other writers at the time. Here, wits and fully human abilities/frailties are the only things that assist/hinder the antagonist. While this is more realistic, it also means that the writer must have as much or more intelligence than their characters and that is more difficult to achieve than you might think. Still, Harris succeeds on all points here, and her plots and characters are now strong enough so that she no longer needs a 'magical' crutch to help her. This makes me think that Harris is growing as a writer and I'm certainly looking forward to reading more of her work in the future.

With all this praise, I'm sure you're wondering if I have any niggles with this book. Well, that little thing about not being totally sure who was speaking until I figured out the black pawn/white pawn business would be one. Another small other problem was that there are occasional inserts of Latin that aren't translated and I didn't fully understand. Still, it wasn't enough to reduce my enjoyment of this book, and in fact, I found that it worked well with the level of language that she uses. Harris writes with a very simple but sophisticated style that isn't overly flowery or poetic, but also isn't overly simplistic either. In other words, she doesn't write 'down' to her readers but she also doesn't write over their heads. This is a fine line to tread, but has been one she has repeatedly achieved with aplomb in all her books, and is something I have always admired.

In sum, this book is Joanna Harris's best novel yet. She has a very compelling story that while not being a true mystery novel, has enough twists to make any mystery genre lover very happy. The characters are strongly written and develop within the action of the book in a natural and believable fashion. The language she uses is perfectly balanced, making this a very well rounded tale indeed. I'd like to give this four and a half stars due to my few niggles, but since there isn't any option for that, I'll give it a full five stars and say that Harris has written her best book ever and I cannot recommend it more highly than that.

Thanks for reading.

Davida Chazan (c) February 2007

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Technical Stuff:
As mentioned above, Joanne Harris has her own web page which is located at www.joanne-harris.co.uk and has information about all the books she's published, and more.

You can buy this book via Amazon.co.uk for £5.59 or through their marketplace from £0.44.

Details of the book are:
Paperback: 512 pages
Publisher: Black Swan; New Ed edition (5 Jun 2006)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0552770027
ISBN-13: 978-0552770026
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Summary: Joanne Harris' best novel yet