Caitrin Jones, a young American, is sent to an English boarding school after her mother dies of cancer. Thrust into an unfriendly world and ridiculed for her American accent, Caitrin lays bare her thoughts and feelings in a luminous stream-of-consciousness narrative. Memories of Isabelle, the best friend she left behind in Maine, give way to dreams haunted by images of an accidental death she believes they caused before she left for England; newly awakened hopes and desires interweave with the old as she gradually adjusts to her new environment. When she begins a relationship with her chemistry teacher, her language soars to astonishing heights; its painful end brings forth words and images that subtly reflect Caitlin's deeper understanding of herself and the world. Culminating in a startling revelation, Schooling is a work of great beauty and power, a tour de force of literary artistry, allusion and illusion.
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Heather McGowan's Schooling is vivid, anguished and compelling, as she focuses on Catrine's experiences at her father's old English boarding school, where she goes when her American mother dies and her Welsh father returns with her to Britain. McGowan enters not only Catrine's thoughts, but also those of her peers, her teachers and her father. She interleaves within the narrative structure myriad voices through such tropes as a play on words, a play on plays (Hamlet; Aristophanes' The Birds) and an unexpected first-person short story. The impression of a constant shift of perspective deceives the reader into frequently casting Catrine on the sidelines, one player among many, and yet she also acts as narrator, reading and recording the minds of those she encounters. Action and thought intersect closely; everyday speech from her teachers and school friends is recorded alongside her fears and emotions, sometimes within one sentence, so that the subject moves from her to her Chemistry teacher to her friend in America.
Although Schooling is a novel that is rightly fêted for its stream-of-consciousness narrative, it contains many incidents that would aptly fit in any boarding-school story and which make absorbing reading: smoking surreptitiously, bullying, sniffing glue, putting on a school play, punishment for "indecent" photographs, minor arson. These incidents are purely that, though--incidental to the main story. They emerge sometimes startlingly through the thick, heady fug of Catrine's relationship with her Chemistry teacher, which is cast beautifully and poetically as innocent and all-enveloping. The denouement of the tale perhaps should be expected, despite the timeless feel of the novel, but it is orchestrated feelingly. McGowan has written a compulsive account of adolescence that moves and grips the reader while stirring sometimes unwanted memories of being 14 and at school. --Olivia Dickinson --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Review
'It is a comfort to find the real thing... and this unsettling, imperfect, but formidable debut is no exception.' Times Literary Supplement; 'I want to say Schooling is the best book I've ever read... and the only book quite unlike any other. It gives you faith that novels can be different' London Review of Books
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
If you've ever wondered what Lolita's point of view might be, then Schooling will give you an insight. Through the eyes and memories - and fantasies - of Catrine, McGowan paints of picture of how it is to be a teenager, with all the rampant longings and hideous anxieties of that age. It's not 'about' boarding school, and it's not 'about' having a crush on your teacher and finding it all goes terribly wrong, but it does raise some uncomfortable points about what it is to be a child moving into an adult world. The press reviews have heavily criticised the style; its "Joycean" nods, it's confusing narrative flow, its apparently awkward structure. Don't believe the critics. Read the book. It's courageous and tricky, and like a game of snakes and ladders, sometimes you know what to expect, and sometimes, you simply spiral down. At the end you feel, like Catrine, that you're rushing headlong into a world over which you've no control. No, it's not an 'easy' read; this isn't Bridget Jones does boarding school, and thank goodness for that; it's much more rewarding and insightful.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Eileen Shaw
TOP 1000 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback
At first this feels like a difficult book which gives you few clues as to who is speaking or perhaps thinking, and when the point of view changes, who it changes to. Written entirely in stream of consciousness, with, sometimes, stage/screenplay directions (for example: `If you're ready for the blood, the scene of us revising vocabulary in Follyfield 4 dissolves to show a boy-`), this novel is unlike any I have read before. The storyline concerns the schooling of a 14 year-old American girl, whose mother has just died. She is sent by her Welsh father to his old public boarding school, which has just begun to take in girls. The all-too familiar adolescent experiences ensue - bullying by an older boy, a bit of mild pyromania, a school play, and a passion for her favourite teacher, who happens to be divorced and susceptible - and though little happens between them, an erotic edge is present in their exchanges.
Anyone who has experimented with writing forms will recognise the futility of trying to capture 'the moment' in its entirety. Yet McGowan's novel absolutely sparkles with the referent moment - one just doesn't know how to place it, since she entirely leaves out the context. Once you get used to this you get the drift of most references, and the linguistic tics and eccentric punctuation, give clues.
There has to be room for a book like this, and for Heather McGowan who has written a hauntingly poignant yet demanding book about a child experiencing an adult world.
Anyone who has experimented with writing forms will recognise the futility of trying to capture 'the moment' in its entirety. Yet McGowan's novel absolutely sparkles with the referent moment - one just doesn't know how to place it, since she entirely leaves out the context. Once you get used to this you get the drift of most references, and the linguistic tics and eccentric punctuation, give clues.
There has to be room for a book like this, and for Heather McGowan who has written a hauntingly poignant yet demanding book about a child experiencing an adult world.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Doll Common
Format:Paperback
I can't even remember what drew me to buying this book, but I'm extremely pleased I did. It wasn't what I expected, and it took me a little time to get into the writing style. Once it 'clicked' though, I was utterly engrossed and didn't want the book to end.
Public school novels are one of my guilty pleasures, and this one ticks all the right boxes - sympathetic outsider protagonist, entertaining scrapes and rule-breaking, boundary-crossing teacher-pupil relationships and all the joys of everyday school life. However, McGowan manages to breathe new life into the genre by writing in a hauting stream-of-conschiousness/ interior monologue style, in which all these elements form the reader's way into Catrine's sharp and sensuous mind rather than simple plot components. The narrative events, made up of trips out with the charismatic Chemistry teacher (whom I fell entirely in love with), memories of home Catrine would rather forget, and the school play of Aristophanes' The Birds, become phantasmagoric and dream-like, woven together in McGowan's precise and haunting prose.
This novel is original and unusual, but not in a gratuitous, self-congratulatory way. It sucks you into Catrine's world, apparently outdated, yet made new through her fresh viewpoint, reflected in the innovative writing. The Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky believed fiction should revitalise our view of the world by making it strange. This is exactly what McGowan has done, and I wish there were more novels like this to breathe new life into old genres.
Public school novels are one of my guilty pleasures, and this one ticks all the right boxes - sympathetic outsider protagonist, entertaining scrapes and rule-breaking, boundary-crossing teacher-pupil relationships and all the joys of everyday school life. However, McGowan manages to breathe new life into the genre by writing in a hauting stream-of-conschiousness/ interior monologue style, in which all these elements form the reader's way into Catrine's sharp and sensuous mind rather than simple plot components. The narrative events, made up of trips out with the charismatic Chemistry teacher (whom I fell entirely in love with), memories of home Catrine would rather forget, and the school play of Aristophanes' The Birds, become phantasmagoric and dream-like, woven together in McGowan's precise and haunting prose.
This novel is original and unusual, but not in a gratuitous, self-congratulatory way. It sucks you into Catrine's world, apparently outdated, yet made new through her fresh viewpoint, reflected in the innovative writing. The Russian Formalist Viktor Shklovsky believed fiction should revitalise our view of the world by making it strange. This is exactly what McGowan has done, and I wish there were more novels like this to breathe new life into old genres.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
1.0 out of 5 stars
Defeated me
I am prepared to make quite an effort to get into even quite demanding writing and there's very little I can't read; but I couldn't read this. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Anastasia Brown
4.0 out of 5 stars
Original
Highly original, revives memories of schooldays and has a very strong female character. The relationship between her and her teacher is all too believable.
Published on 28 July 2010 by Tricky fan
4.0 out of 5 stars
Challenging but ultimately worth it.
Not so much a review this. More a discussion. Mainly because, although I've read the book cover to cover, I still don't feel entirely qualified. Read more
Published on 6 May 2010 by Dario McGeachy
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