Dark therapy .... (Gentlemen and Players - Joanne Harris)

Member Name: mcader

Product:	Gentlemen and Players - Joanne Harris
Date:	27/02/09 (26 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great writing

Disadvantages: cynical

There's no doubt that there's great writing here, scanning like a torch around the darkened corridors of the world of being young, at schools and being old, in teaching. It certainly reminds one of 'Lucky Jim' by Kingsley Amis, and similar common-room tv dramas such as Teachers. At least on the entertaining side.....for here a darker, poorly-nurtured world also lurks and looks set to dominate overall.


This penetrating, cyncial first-person narration, fuels the book and is almost too clever for its own good, despite being constructed with reference to a chess game. The lesser characters (mostly teachers) suffer and tend to be very sketchy surname-references, because the emphasis for the book's pace is placed on an intinsic Grudge, and its murderous effects. It's certainly turns pages though.


The plot itself is a clinically devised affair, hatched within an emotionally-affected youngster, and resulting envy and damage is inflicted on the institution of 'good' English schools, no thanks to the class division between it and a nearby comprehensive. The book scores in addressing a likely scenario of someone directly affected by such a division, and facing up to the smug world of schools in general, that can make insufficient room for genuine understanding and 'therapy', with no cost to reputation. Young love also tears along its merciless edge, with a strong cocktail of negativity from both sides, or classes.


The central twist is welcome without being predictable, serving to further challenge the institutions of those like St Oswalds Grammar School (for boys), surely - thankfully - more rare these days? Ultimately, it's a dark tale, and the resonance of its hyper-cynical, hyper-realist narration lives on beyond an essential blindness, but cosy warmth of the eternal teaching world. All those individual, potent wills and the ensuing energy-play within a general Collective.


It strongly reminds us of the cold, threatening restlessness within the process of seeking to grow up happy, loved and balanced. Oddly, we feel the narrator still has some right to this, even after this relation of a personal, self-satisfied, horrific game.

Summary: Penetrating, cyncial first-person narration