Customer Reviews

The Academy

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This entry from Bentley Little--the author that horror master Stephen King refers to as "horror's poet laureate"--is a chilling little tale that satirizes the American educational system, vicarious parenting, blind faith, conservative politics, and even military mentality. While some readers will certainly find a few superficial similarities to Little's previous novel UNIVERSITY, this story is actually quite different. Set at a high school rather than at a collegiate institution, THE ACADEMY addresses issues involved with running a secondary school and the school's peripheral institutions and offices. Also, unlike the sentient building of UNIVERSITY, the literal school in THE ACADEMY is not evil per se; rather, it is those operating the school, as well as parents and students that get caught up in the fervor, that become the instruments of a preternatural evil.

As with most of Little's novels, there are genuinely scary moments, and his satirical prose is often as darkly disturbing as it is wryly humorous. Though the story's denouement is a bit less spectacular than it could have been, THE ACADEMY is actually a tight little page-turner that is even better than some of Little's recent works such as DISPATCH and THE POLICY (though it still falls short of surpassing his magnum opus, the brilliant Wal-Mart satire THE STORE).

In THE ACADEMY, fans of Bentley Little will definitely find the horror and dark humor they expect. But even those readers who only occasionally detour into the horror genre can expect a good read.

I am a big fan of Bentley Little, as he is truly one of the most intriguing horror novelists around. With his penchant for taking the mundane and weaving it into a no holds-barred horror story, he has little equal in the genre.

That being said, this latest offering by the author is set in a high school that has undergone a transformation. It has gone from being a district school to being an independent charter school, and therein lies the rub. Newly independent, the principal takes independency to new heights. Unfettered and unrestrained, everyday concepts of discipline, learning, and loyalty take on new meaning. The teachers, as well as the students, slowly succumb, one by one, to this novel and horrific approach to education. As they do, the school becomes a very scary place indeed, with survival just a hope in one's heart.

As with all Bentley novels, there are some truly horrifying and shocking moments throughout. Though it is somewhat formulaic and has the usual pitfalls that are seemingly the norm with Bentley's novels, such as subplots that go nowhere, unresolved plot issues, and a race to the finish line at the end, it is the journey that is enjoyable, more so than the arrival at one's destination. So, fasten your seatbelts, as it will be a somewhat bumpy ride. Still, as one gets off this rollercoaster, one can be sure that one would willingly clamber aboard again.

The school district contains many conservative fundamentalists, who demand censoring books, limiting what is taught, and definitely outlawing evolution. Additionally they insist on not wasting money on poor students. When the principal of John Tyler High School applies to convert it to a charter school she sells it to the teachers and parents, promising higher wages and a better education. By a small margin, Tyler HS becomes a charter school.

Even before the charter was passed, there were some dark zones in the school in which supernatural phenomena seem to occur. The custodial staff bears witness to such events, but they suddenly disappear as do any teacher who opposed the charter concept and student considered "tainted". The personalities of those remaining at Tyler change dramatically and frighteningly. Punishment becomes norm, but these chastisements make the school seem like a rendition prison. Two teachers Linda and Diane, and students Ed, Brad, and Myla see ghosts and hear voices with no one around. They also notice an eerie fog that shows the past when the school had young children having fun in the playground. The quintet teams up to abort the spell the principal has cast but each of them knows that the faculty and student body will horrifically destroy them if they fail.

Using headlines over what to teach in school, Bentley Little designs an intelligent well written entertaining horror tale that sprinkles the curriculum debate with a paranormal extremist position. The story line is fast-paced yet has multiple levels while throughout providing a cautionary undertone that extremism means exclusiveness by leaving people outside the tent. Besides the principal making the law inside the school; the ghosts remind people of the past, and the disappearances add suspense as readers wonder whether the vanishings are mundane or poltergeist in nature. Fans will relish Mr. Little's enjoyable dissertation on education.

Harriet Klausner

I've been a fan of Bentley Little's for years now; whenever I'm in the horror section at Borders, I check to see if there's a new Little book out that I haven't read yet. Some writers have compared Little to King, Straub, Barker, and other greats in the horror fiction field. One blurb on one of his books, from Stephen King, describes Little as "A Master of the Macabre"; and on Little's latest book, The Academy, there's a blurb from King that describes Little as "Horror's poet laureate".

The first book of Bentley Little's book that I read was The Ignored. That book is, in my opinion, Little's best; not only is it a fine horror novel, but I think it could stand on its own as a respectable mainstream novel, with the likes of Upton Sinclair or John Updike. It's the rather hokey supernatural stuff at the end of that novel, in fact, that are its biggest undoing.

Likewise with his 1998 novel, The Store. That novel can be read as a great condemnation of the influence that major "big box" retailers such as WalMart have on small towns in America. It's great satire, another brilliant novel unfortunately done in by overly dramatic supernatural influences at the end.

Most of Little's books are like that: unfettered and unbridled condemnations of large institutions and their dehumanizing effects over regular people. I've never met the man (I did have the opportunity to chat with him online once), but I have this image of Little as a card-holding NRA member, secluded on his property in Arizona and probably voting Libertarian. The dehumanization in Little's books are usually shown as an institutional supernatural horror, which often brings people, particularly those in authority, to their absolute worst, in brutal and quite often sexually explicit ways. In The Association, we get a glimpse of how a home-owner's association can drive a typical homeowner to utter ruin. The Policy shows a family devastated by an evil insurance corporation, sort of Michael Moore meets Freddy Kreuger.

In his more recent books, however, it feels to me that Little is scraping the bottom of the barrel in his search for ways in which he can demonstrate the inhumanizing effects that large institutions can have on people, and his supernatural elements are becoming more and more banal. In Dispatch, which I believe is Little's strongest novel since The Ignored, the "big bad" at the end turns out to be just another misshapen, evil beast. And to be honest, I'm not even sure I got the point of The Vanishing, his 2006 novel.

In his newest novel, The Academy, Little takes on charter schools, and the result is, unfortunately, disappointing. While he handles the trope of a haunted school much more adeptly than Michael Paine did in The Night School, there's still quite a bit that's lacking. The dehumanized victims of the supernatural forces are brutal and vicious in typical Little ways, and in typical Little fashion we witness most of it through the eyes of people who are on the periphery, affected by the forces but not altered by them. But here the causes of the events are given such short shrift that it almost feels like Little uses the novel more as an excuse to showcase brutality and depravity, rather than examine its effects. I went through too many scenes wincing, rather than wondering what was going on. And when the forces behind the events in the novel are finally revealed, I found myself disappointed. It's an interesting villain behind it all, but given so little face time that it's barely seen at all. Most of Little's villains are faceless and operate entirely through intermediaries, but the villain here seems mishandled, even clumsily written.

In general, I enjoy Bentley Little's novels, and I recommend him. The Academy, however, is not his strongest novel, and I can't recommend it to anyone.

For a synopsis, please look at Amazon's blurb & at prior reviews, which have done a fine enough job of summarizing the book's plot that I don't feel I have to reiterate it.

Here's my assessment: I still think Bentley Little's novel THE STORE is one of the best social horror novels ever written, and I thought his novel THE UNIVERSITY was nearly as good. The first half or so of THE ACADEMY was in that league -- unease that was rapidly building into terror as events at post-charter John Tyler High School began to escalate. However, the second half of the book was really disappointing. The "horrors" that occurred weren't much different from what Little has portrayed again and again in other novels (such as taboo-shattering perversions that, if you've read enough Little, you can get desensitized to.) It seems like Little is in kind of a rut, rehashing the same sorts of horrors. And the ending felt very abrupt and cobbled together. Overall, I found it very unsatisfying. Personally, I'd rather have a book with a weaker beginning and stronger ending that vice-versa. THE STORE and THE UNIVERSITY are much better.

I typically think of Bentley Little as two different sorts of horror writer. In some of his books, he writes straight horror: these include books like The Burning, The Return and The Walking. Then there are his other novels, ones of dark satire such as The Policy, The Resort, The Store and The Association. The Academy also fits into this second category.

The things being satirized in this book are charter schools. In a Southern California county that is controlled by religious fundamentalists, it initially sounds like a good thing when Tyler High applies to be a charter school. The promise of greater local control sounds good on the surface, but to English teacher Linda Webster, things seem a little fishy. For one thing, the conversion to charter status seems to have been done in secret. Also, the principal has undergone a complete personality change, and not one for the better.

Soon, Linda's suspicions seem to be even more justified, as new practices are put into place. Parents are forced to volunteer at the school, often to do activities such as posing nude for the art class. Teachers get more latitude for punishing students for even minor infractions, leading some pupils to disappear completely. Those teachers who resisted the charter find bad things happening to them and their family. And seemingly worst of all, students are joining the Tyler Scouts, a secret student police group with vast powers and who participate in dark rituals. Guiding all these evils is something supernatural, and only Linda and a handful of other teachers and students are willing to fight it.

As is typical with most Little novels, The Academy is a fast and entertaining read. And like many Little novels, I found it to fall apart in the end, but not enough to truly mar my enjoyment of the book. And though I call The Academy satire, don't expect much laugh-at-loud moments; Little's humor is much darker and more likely to induce a cringe than a giggle.

I really enjoyed "Dispatch," "The Store" and some other books by Bentley Little. He is outrageous and over-the-top (the demon-run Store starts selling adult s-- products on the toy aisle). I enjoyed "The Policy," too (demon characters sell insurance that you can't refuse).

"The Academy" is great satire, but I laughed so much that I couldn't suspend belief and accept it as a scary story. I stopped reading after a 180 pages. It just got too over-the-top. The PE teacher had the cheerleaders take off their underclothes for a performance! Earlier the art teacher demanded that some mothers model in the nude for the students! (One student attempts suicide after the kids start teasing him about his hot mama.)

If you can skim over these things, then I think you might really like the book. It was a little too much for me.

So, two stars or five--I just don't know. In my opinion, here are the best Bentley Little novels:

1. "Dispatch" (This compelling story begins with a boy writing complaint letters to companies and getting coupons with letters of apology).

Dispatch (Signet Novel)

2. "The Store" (an evil Wal-Mart style store opens in a small Arizona town, and soon takes over--even running the sheriff's office).

The Store

3. "The Policy" (a man moves from LA to Tuscon after his divorce, and after the window on his car is broken, he is offered insurance).

The Policy

John Tyler High has finally become a charter school. This means that the school operates independently of the school district. It also means that Jody Hawkes, Tyler's principal, has complete control over the happenings within the school. Tyler is now for only the best students--the most loyal, the most academically successful, the most financially-stable. Parents must volunteer time or money every semester. Some students are singled out specifically to bully others, enforcing rules in an ever-changing charter. A few people have noticed something wrong...but the punishment for disobedience is severe. Very severe.

"The Academy" is pure Bentley Little. This is both good and bad. Little writes satirical horror like no one else; fans may dote on his use of gore and perversity, but underneath it all is a keen wit and insight into the goings-on of contemporary society. The problem is, it gets a bit old after a while. "The Academy" reads a lot like 2001's "The Association," except instead of a gated community, we have a high school. It's a repetitious formula that takes a bit getting used to, if not only for the fact that you have to have a tough-stomach to read a Little novel--the gore and horror is usually up-front and in your face, though Little's use of subtlety is un-paralleled in the business (if only he'd do it more often...).

Still, repetitious or not, "The Academy" manages to make you squirm and wriggle and look over your shoulder (the cannibalistic scene, for instance, is a real gut-churner). It's all a bit predictable, if you're familiar with Little's novels...but that's obviously not too much of a hendrance (notice the 4 stars). Basically, if you're a Little fan, you're used to it by now. Hopefully, you can wade through the gore and perversion, and still appreciate the satirical remarks about contemporary society (which, let's face it, seem a bit paranoid; doesn't mean he doesn't have a point, though). "The Academy" is horror for the thoughtful reader; like all of Little's novels, it's a horror novel for those of us who aren't afraid to think (but are still afraid of the dark).

Bentley Little, for some unexplained reason, remains American Horror's best kept secret. He's written nearly 20 horror novels aor collections, been compared to King & Koontz and never fails to deliver.

His novel, THE ACADEMY, is a timely as it is creepy. With all the talk now about Charter schools, anyone who reads this book might have second thoughts about their veracity. Tyler HIgh School has announced that they are moving to a 'charter' program, but a few shrewd teachers and a small group of students quickly become suspicious at all the eerie and sometimes maniacal activities that are taking place at the new school.

It wouldn't be a Little novel without a supernatural element --- and this comes in the form of some old books found in a secret part of the library showing how the school had once been an Academy under the guidance of a religious fanatic and possibly evil man named John Hawkes. Funny how nearly 150 years later, the current principal is the Stepford Wife-like, Jody Hawkes.

It will take more than a vote to repeal this charter and stop the insanity at Tyler High. Not Little's scariest novel -- by far --- but an eerie read that will have any parent second-guessing where their child goes to school and who is teaching them!

Strange things are going on at Tyler High School. Recently converted to a charter school, Tyler High is undergoing a lot of changes. The principal, normally a very laid back and kind woman, has turned into a strict dictator-like leader. She has created a group of "Tyler Scouts" that parade around the school, empowering them to enforce rules and regulations with students AND teachers. Students and teachers that opposed the contract have gone missing. Ghostly images of children are seen playing on the school grounds, and student and staff alone are afraid to enter the school grounds at night alone. A handful of students and teachers still brave enough to stand up against the school join up and discover a way to destroy the evil at Tyler High. Bentley Little's THE ACADEMY is full of horrific tales of the atrocities that take place at Tyler High. The ending seemed to be a little too "neat", but that certainly didn't take anything away from this great work piece of horror fiction. This was my first taste of Little's writing; I can't wait to read more from him!