- Paperback: 380 pages
- Publisher: Piatkus Books (4 Sep 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0749933879
- ISBN-13: 978-0749933876
- Product Dimensions: 17.2 x 11 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 769,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Old School Ties
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Product Description
Review
'a funny and well-observed unputdownable novel' CHRIS MANBY
Product Description
Friends - and enemies - reunited! They say your school days are the best days of your life and Tracey Mortimer would agree. Sixteen years ago she ruled! She was the most popular girl in school, had her own gang and was dating the cutest guy in her year. Now she's 32, stuck in a dull marriage that's only tolerable because her philandering builder husband is rarely at home. And though Tracey loves her two kids, a daily diet of alphabetti spaghetti and the Tweenies, isn't exactly thrilling...Then Tracey spots an ad from a TV company wanting to make a reality-style show on a perfect school reunion. She jumps at the chance to relive the 'good old days'. Only some of Tracey's classmates don't remember their schooldays as fondly...Suzanne Sharp is more interested in revenge than a reunion. Tracey made her teenage years a misery and what better way to lay the past to rest than to get payback on national television. Especially as there are a few old school secrets that Tracey probably wouldn't want broadcast on national TV, not least of which is Tracey's affair with her old form tutor...
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
MUCH MORE THAN MERE NOSTALGIA FEST,
By Laura Marcus (England, UK.) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Old School Ties (Paperback)
With bullying and child abuse such strong agenda-setting issues at the moment, this book is a rare opportunity to get inside the head of the kind of girl who made many of our schooldays a total misery.Anti-heroine Tracey Mortimer LOVED school and it’s easy to see why. She ruled the place; everyone was terrified of her, including the teachers. But now with a dreary life and kids who bore as well as disappoint her and a husband’s who’s worse, Tracey looks back longingly to the days of the old school yard. If you’ve ever wondered what makes a bully tick, what presses their buttons, this is the book for you. It can’t have been easy creating such a heroine and to make her a sympathetic character we, ultimately, find ourselves rooting for is testimony to Harrison’s skill as a writer. And she beautifully realises the heroine’s two young children with some of most poignant and moving scenes in the book. Old School Ties is a rant against worshipping at the shrine of ignorance which is, of course, what most school bullies do when they taunt the class swots they actually deeply envy. Tracey is a brighter spark - and infinitely more interesting - than those lives she’s supposedly ruined. In the end, of course, she only really blighted her own but she’s the guts, tenacity and determination to put that right. Though the book has some flaws - the love affair with the tutor was, for me, a yuk factor too far, I recommend it. It’s entertaining as well as thought provoking and definitely a read for our times.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funny, true, and basically delightful!,
This review is from: Old School Ties (Paperback)
It is rare to stumble across a book of the chick-lit genre that focuses on possibly the most (well, for some) entertaining aspect of anyone's life - school. After hearing of this title, I was amused by the synopsis and thought it would be a funny, enlightening read. I was definitely right.Tracey Mortimer is a regular, thirty-something mum of two with a somewhat boring life and an even more boring (and irritating) husband. When she spies an advertisement from a TV company offering the chance for a school reunion (to be filmed, of course), she jumps at the chance. After all, she WAS the most popular girl at school... Popular she was, but to the mifortune of many others. While Tracey assumes she can have a fun-packed, friendly reunion, others are thinking differently. Including Suzanne Sharp; Tracey's favourite victim of torment, and Gary, her old boyfriend who she humiliated years before. Is the party all going to go as planned? Without giving too much away, Tracey Mortimer, the most popular girl at Crawley Park Comprehensive, is in for a shocking experience. New author Kate Harrison presents the most realistic of characters, and pays close attention to everyday aspects of school such as bullying. Always the bully, Tracey does not realise how much misery she caused until her own daughter is the victim of playground bullies. Anyone who attended a regular high school can relate to the characters introduced; the successful swot, the 'fat' girl who is friends with everyone, and the popular, pretty girls whose lives were constantly focused on boys yet always seemed to end up worse off. Reading this I could relate to my own days at school (even though I was born the year in which Tracey left!). The popular, teasing kind always ended up as average, stay-at-home mums in unhappy relationships. And, like Tracey, there was always something missing in their lives. Not only was this book excellent in terms of writing style and brilliant story, it was also one of the most amusing books I have read in a long while. True, entertaining and extremely funny, this was one of the most delightful books out there. I definitely recommend it. Especially to those reality TV fans.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
FUNNIEST AND WITTIEST BOOK I'VE READ IN AGES,
By A Customer
This review is from: Old School Ties (Paperback)
This is a very good story told with tremendous style and originality. It's very, very funny. What really made me sit up when I started reading it was the way it begins with Tracey's view of the world and what happens to her when she, with the help of a TV crew, organises a friends reunited style school reunion and then we go to the TV station and the ghastly TV producer and his side-kicks, then to the other pupils, the teachers... all knitted together seamlessly for a fantastic read.
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