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A Good School: A Novel
  

A Good School: A Novel (Hardcover)

by Richard Yates (Author)
3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Hardcover
  • Publisher: Doubleday (Aug 1978)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0385283695
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385283694
  • Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 3,281,134 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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    #54 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > Y > Yates, Richard

Product Description

Independent

'One of his later novels and his best... Written in measured, precise prose, it deals out mortification and humiliation with an even hand.'
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description

At fifteen, Terry Flynn had the face of an angel and the body of a perfect athlete...Set in a small boarding school on the eve of America's entry into World War Two, "A Good School" tells the story of William Grove, the nervous teenager trying to fit in; the betrayed alcoholic, Jack Draper; and, Edith Stone, the teacher's daughter, who falls in love with the most popular boy in school. Instantly acclaimed on its first publication, peopled with some of Richard Yates' most memorable characters, this tender, spare masterpiece is a haunting meditation on the twilight of youth, and an unforgettable description of the impact of war on the lives of an innocent generation. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Customer Reviews

4 Reviews
5 star:
 (1)
4 star:
 (1)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:    (0)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
3.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Best School of Writing, 14 Aug 2007
By Eugene Onegin (Lincoln England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Good School (Paperback)
The most autobiographical novel of an author who specialises in such an approach to fiction, A Good School is not the best book by Yates but is still better than most. For those of you not yet familiar with this superb writer, can I urge you to lose no more time in discovering him? Actually this is no mean place to start an exploration of his oeuvre for although published in 1978, it takes as its inspiration Yates's own school days in the early to mid forties and much can be learnt of the author and his later preoccupations from this fictionalised account. In elegant and effortless prose Yates quickly paints a world and a cast of characters which you very rapidly find yourself caring about, the human perception and emotional honesty which typifies all his writing is here in spades. The best trick of the book is the skill with which Yates manages to evoke that dualistic approach many of us adopt in looking back on our schooldays-which as here can often be riven with feelings of inadequacy, bullying, struggles for status and personal tragedy-yet somehow still coating them with the haze of nostalgia for a lost idealism and the energy of youth. In Yates's unsentimental hands teachers and boys live and hurt, learning that the certainties of youth are anything but: school offering a glimpse of a troubled future. Recommended to all and as a stepping stone to the great Revolutionary Road and Young Hearts Crying
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars A Novella with much to recommend it, 1 Feb 2009
A Good School is a semi-autobigraphical novella/slim book that has much to recommend it. It is Yates doing what he does best: describing in spare, economical prose the fragile often wounded psyches of a group of American boys and their teachers: the storyline is deceptively simple but utterly absorbing. Like so much of Yates' writing this is a little gem with its exquisitely honed prose, the deliberate understatement of emotion only serving to highlight the underlying agonies and confusion of impressionistic youth. It is not my favourite book by Yates but it has much to recommend it.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars A Strangely Haunting Little Book, 24 May 2007
By J. CUSACK (Bournemouth, UK) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: A Good School (Paperback)
A Good School follows the lives of various characters from a group of (mostly) WASP school boys at a New England prep school in the years leading up to, and directly following Pearl Harbour. It covers similar themes to other prep school stories such as Catcher In The Rye and has a strong sense of pathos running through much of the book. A Good School is under 170 pages long so it's not an epic multi-layered story, it is however a beautifully crafted book, the prose is very tight and there's not a word out of place.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

3.0 out of 5 stars Beginning of a fine career.. too bad it ended so early.
There is a Yates revival on right now, and very good. This is the third one from Vintage Classics of the UK of this fine, now dead American writer that I have bought on Amazon UK... Read more
Published 10 months ago by Wayne Lee Stedman

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