School days : a novel

Title:

Author:

Galassi, Jonathan, author.

Personal Author:

Galassi, Jonathan, author.

ISBN:

9781635421897

Physical Description:

211 pages ; 22 cm

Abstract:

"From the renowned president of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, a coming-of-age tale of privilege and hidden sexuality at a New England boys' boarding school. Sam has spent more than half his life at the prestigious Leverett high school, which lies at the heart of an affluent Connecticut town of the same name. First as a student in the late 1960s, before coeducation, then as an English teacher after Harvard and Oxford, he developed a keen sense of loyalty to this vaunted institution that shaped his identity. But when the headmaster reveals that a former classmate of Sam's has raised allegations of long-concealed sexual abuse, Sam finds himself reliving those formative years, forced to confront the dark underside of a seemingly enviable world of wealth and intellect. Telling the story of a brilliant teacher whose mysterious behavior fascinates his students until charges against him begin to emerge, School Days deftly navigates the politics of social circles and fraught crushes. With this latest novel, critically acclaimed writer and publisher Jonathan Galassi provides a nuanced, deeply observed portrait of a particular type of American meritocracy, with all its flaws"-- Provided by publisher.

Subject Term:

Private schools -- Fiction.

Rich people -- Fiction.

Teacher-student relationships -- Fiction.

Sex crimes -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

Connecticut -- Fiction.

Summary:

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
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Summary

Sam has spent more than half his life at the prestigious Leverett high school, which lies at the heart of an affluent Connecticut town of the same name. First as a student in the late 1960s, before coeducation, then as an English teacher, he developed a keen sense of loyalty to this vaunted institution that shaped his identity. But when the headmaster reveals that a former classmate of Sam's has raised allegations of long-concealed sexual abuse, Sam finds himself reliving those formative years, forced to confront the dark underside of a seemingly enviable world of wealth and intellect.

Reviews (1)

Kirkus Review

Boarding school life and loves in the 1960s. Sam Brandt, the protagonist of well-known editor and poet Galassi's second novel, is an alumnus of Leverett, a Connecticut boarding school that had "always exuded an aura of meritocratic rather than purely pecuniary elitism." Some 20 years after graduation he returns to the school to teach English. When the Head of School receives a claim of long-ago sexual abuse from one of Sam's classmates, he asks Sam to investigate the accusation against former faculty member Theo Gibson, "the most inventive, demanding, popular teacher in the school" and someone who served as Sam's "sounding board and source of wisdom." The novel shifts into a lengthy flashback from Sam's perspective, describing the complicated choreography of sexual desire at the school in its final years as a male-only institution, and specifically how students like him were forced by the mores of the time to suppress any overt expression of their desire, as "love among the boys was tacitly acknowledged and rigorously guarded against." In Sam's case, that included an intense, but utterly chaste, relationship with Eddie Braddock, a "dazzling, combustible kid" in Sam's eyes. He was "desperate for Eddie's touch, yet he was determined, too, that the nobility of their bond not be tainted by neurosis." When the story returns to its contemporary setting, capped off by a brief coda at the class of 1967's 50th reunion, Galassi reveals how this sexual repression has damaged the lives of Sam and his friends--in Sam's case, a marriage that produced a child has ended when it could no longer endure the truth of his sexual orientation--but at least hints at the possibility of recovery in late middle age. While the novel could have benefited from the elimination of some peripheral characters, Galassi's understated style and economical prose are well suited to this elegiac story. A thoughtful exploration of the lingering effects of repressed sexual identity. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.