Heather McGowan’s widely praised first novel introduces a literary artist of consummate skill, and a narrative voice of astonishing sensitivity and sensuousness. Tracking every mercurial shift of her character’s consciousness, the result is dreamy, disquieting, and achingly alive.
Schooling is a portrait of an adolescent girl, thirteen-year-old Catrine Evans, who following her mother’s death is uprooted from her home in America to an English boarding school. There she encounters classmates who sniff glue and engage in arson and instructors who make merciless fun of her accent. She also finds the sympathetic chemistry teacher Mr. Gilbert, who offers Catrine the friendship she so desperately wants–a friendship that gradually takes on sinister and obsessive overtones.
Book Magazine
McGowan's debut novel looks out at the world through the eyes of an intelligent, slightly dazed thirteen-year-old girl. More than your average coming-of-age story, it has the quality of a waking dream. The narrator, Catrine Evans, is an American sent to a British boarding school after her mother's death. The few students there who even acknowledge her existence are usually making sarcastic comments about her accent. Then there's the matter of Gilbert, a mousy teacher who Catrine is fond of, not to mention the recurring nightmares she's having about a fatal accident that she and her old friend in America might have inadvertently caused. Although many of the details are deliberately left out (there's one character who might even be a ghost of Catrine's mind), McGowan gives us an astonishingly clear portrait of a girl about to be derailed on her way to something amazing.
Chris Barsanti
(Excerpted Review)
Categories:
- Arts & Photography
- History & Criticism
- History
- History & Criticism
Publisher : Vintage
Author : McGowan, Heather
Language : English
Edition : Reprint
Published :2002-06-25
Number Of Pages : 320
Binding : Paperback
ISBN-10 : 0375714324
ISBN-13 : 9780375714320
Item weight : 0.5 lb
Dimensions : 0.73 in x 5.85 in x 8.43 in
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