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From the book jacket: Fifteen years ago Vida Avery arrived alone and
pregnant at elite Fayer Academy. She has since become a fixture and one of the
best English teachers Fayer has ever had. By living on campus, on an island off
the New England coast, Vida has cocooned herself and her son, Peter, from the
outside world and from an inside secret. For years she has lived largely through
the books she teaches, but when she accepts the impulsive marriage proposal of
ardent widower Tom Belou, the prescribed life Vida has constructed is swiftly
dismantled.
Peter, however, welcomes the changes. Excited to move off campus, eager to have
siblings at last, Peter anticipates a regular life with a "normal"
family. But the Belou children are still grieving, and the memory of their
recently dead mother exerts a powerful hold on the house. As Vida begins
teaching her signature book, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, a nineteenth-century
tale of an ostracized woman and social injustice, its themes begin to echo
eerily in her own life and Peter sees that the mother he perceived as
indomitable is collapsing and it is up to him to help.
Comment: This is Lily King's second book following The Pleasing Hour (1999),
which was described by the New York Times Book Review as "splendid...powerful....[and] so assured it's hard to believe
the book itself is her debut". As Publishers Review says in their
starred review of The English Teacher, 'A marriage of single parents is more often the stuff of sitcoms
than of serious novels, but King uses it to great
effect in this intense character study.' Other reviewers wax lyrical
about her 'poetic yet streamlined prose', her 'pinpoint perception of
her characters' inner lives' and 'subtle clarity'. Only Kirkus
Reviews is guarded with its praise saying, 'Tom is too good to be true, and Vida too unpleasant to care
about. Still, King beautifully delineates the grieving children in all their
confused steps toward recovery.'
This review first ran in the September 14, 2005 issue of BookBrowse Recommends.
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