Old School Ties (Paperback)

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.

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.