Customer Reviews

The Chatham School Affair

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

In the summer of 1926, Miss Elizabeth Channing steps off the bus in Chatham, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, to teach art at the Chatham Boys School. She will be living in a small cottage outside of town on Black Pond, her only neighbor, a married, literature teacher, Leland Reed. So begins The Chatham School Affair, narrated by the headmaster's son, Henry Griswald. Henry takes the reader back to that year, in a spellbinding, moving story of the events that led, to what the townspeople will always call, the Chatham School affair. This is not just a suspense thriller or mystery novel, but a sensitive, compelling story of how the power of the spoken word, once said, can never be taken back or undone and can change, forever the course of many lives. With his eloquent writing and subtle plot twists, Mr. Cook keeps the reader off balance, always guessing and never quite sure, all the way to the climactic ending. His characters come alive on the page and his scenes are so riveting and vivid, they are sometimes painful to read. A stunning story of love, loss and betrayal. Thomas Cook deserved all the awards The Chatham School Affair won.

One cannot be prepared for one's first Thomas H Cook book. It is a unique, disturbing, and edifying experience. Told in the first person by "Henry," who looks back on tragic events of long ago, the story moves slowly, agonizingly, with gathering shadows and dark portents. There are certain stories - books and movies - that seem to define the reader/viewer. I have, for instance, asked many people what the movie "Midnight Cowboy" was about and I have never had anywhere near the same definition twice. This book is like that. It plumbs the minds, spirits, and emotions of its characters, evokes tingling suspense, and fulfills its haunting promise with an ending that you will never forget. Not for "action" readers, but so very very rewarding for those of us who look for excellent writing, plotting, and "something different." It will leave and indelible mark in your reading-mind.

I read this book several months ago and with Mr. Cook's latest PLACES IN THE DARK set to come out in May '00, I've picked up a couple more. My review is that this is a wonderful story. I grew up partly in a small town in Southwestern Oklahoma and most if not all of the images and characters Mr. Cook created in CHATHAM SCHOOL AFFAIR is so familiar to me. The story itself is melancholy, wistful. With each page I turn, I know I'm drawing closer to a sad ending but I can't help hoping that it's going to come out differently. I just finished his book BREAKHEART HILL as well and his books are completely different from the usual cliched detective novels that glut the mystery racks. Every time I finish one of his books, each one makes me feel as if I don't treat my fellow human beings as well as they should be treated. Mr. Cook takes me to a place I'd like to call home in each of the books I've read so far. He's spoiled me and I wish more writers would write the same type tales he spins.

Let me start off with a warning: even though this book is very good, and well deserves its Edgar, perhaps reading it will not be the best thing for you.

For one thing, its narrative structure requires some attention from the reader. The action on which the narrator reflects takes place in the 1920's. The point of view shifts between the present and a moving index in the past, an index which inexorably creeps up on the disaster. Meanwhile we are given misleading hints and scraps of information about what will happen. Actually, the narrative is not so much like seeing one thing, then another. It is like watching a dithered image come up on your computer screen: first you get rough outlines, then the details are filled in, until finally all the pixels are filled in. But the last pixels are the important ones, in this case.

Most intelligent readers can handle that kind of variation from normal style, but some can't, and if you can't you should read something else. But that's not the main danger. Once the details are all filled in - on the last page - and you get a good look at the picture, you will not be happier for it. It will be sort of like one of Dore's engravings for Dante's "Inferno": a very well done picture of something horrible.

I am using the words "horror" and "horrible" in a very deliberate sense. I don't mean in the Stephen King sense of non-human ghouls and monsters. What I am associating with the word "horror" is a sense of inescapable disaster befalling people who don't deserve it, and for no reason that you will find at all compatible with the notion of a "fair universe". It's not enjoyable to look at, and that's why the craft of horror writing often involves sneaking up on the reader and sticking it in his/her face before he/she can get away.

Well, after you have allowed yourself to care for the characters - and there are no villains in the piece - you will, at the end, find out who dies, and how, and who suffers, and how, and why. And it will be a very bleak picture - a picture of great artistic integrity, but without any pleasant highlights whatever. And there is a distinct possibility that you will say to yourself, "Why did I read this? Why did I look upon this picture, which will now depress me for the rest of the day or longer?"

I'm really not kidding about this. However, on balance, I am glad I read this book. It is, in fact, a horror novel about ethics. The disaster which envelops the narrator (then an adolescent boy at his father's private school on Cape Cod), and the teachers he loves, and everyone and everything else he values, is ultimately one of conflicting imperatives. Conform to hidebound convention, or cast it off? Follow your heart, or lock it away? Do your duty, or abandon it? Help your loved ones, or remain aloof? Mercy, or accountability? St. Augustine, I think, made the point that sin is virtue perverted or overdone. Therefore, the mere fact that you are acting on an ethical imperative is no insurance that you won't have blood on your hands. But to know what virtue has been perverted into what catastrophic sin by whom, you have to wait for the last pixel.

It's unfortunate that the synopsis provided on the back cover is somewhat misleading. Despite what it seems like, this is not a detective story, a whodunit type deal. Half way through the book the readers will have figured what the "affair" is all about. But, this book is not about solving a crime and finding the culprit. The so-called "affair" is in fact a simple case of adultery. What important is that this "affair" is more a setup for the readers to examine the mindsets of different characters in the story. Who has done what is not we care about. Instead we are drawn into the mind and personality of the characters. Who is this person? What is she/he thinking? How is she/he feeling about everything and everyone around? And, how has this feeling changed throughout the Chatham School Affair? One of the key characters, who is also the narrator of the story, is Henry. Why, after so many years, has Henry settled back in Chatham, a town he so despised as a boy, a place he so desperately wished to run away from? Is it because of his guilt and shame? Is it because he has changed the way he feels about his father? His town? Or is it because he has changed the way he feels about life? These and many other questions linger on in my head long after I close the book. If the readers try to understand the Chatham School Affair from such an angle, she/he will realize that this book is indeed a very good novel, not about any mysterious death or murder, but, more satisfyingly, the human soul and heart.

Seven decades later, old Henry Griswald looks back on the defining experience of his life - the tragedy known to the people of his town as the Chatham School Affair. A young woman and a married man, teachers at the school of which his father was principal, had fallen in love. It was an era in which a woman could be sent to prison for the crime of adultery, and the beautiful Miss Channing, strong willed, cultivated and empathetic, did not easily fit in to a town and a school where conventions are not lightly flouted. The teenaged Henry Griswald, chafing with adolescent angst against what he perceives to be the repressiveness of his life and the society in which he lives, projects his own romantic longings on the doomed couple. What results is a tragedy of errors in which revenge, madness and murder are the inevitable result. The point of this novel is not the plot, which is simple and I would venture to say deliberately predictable, but the gradual revelation of character in the main actors in the drama. An impressive performance that richly deserves the Edgar for Best Novel.

For reasons like The Chatham School Affair, Thomas H. Cook is my favorite author. This book, unlike some of his others, does not have the wrenching plot twists we have come to expect from Cook. It does have more subtle character twists. It does bring that that big payoff at the end, which fits very well into this story. The last page changes our minds about the main character.

Very smoothly written, easy to follow despite the many characters. Each person has a place and is defined quite well. Cook has very good control over his use of suspense. The "murder mystery" genre applauds this title.

I reccomend reading this title over a few days. It's definitely not a one-day read.

I read a fair number of works of literature and many, many mysteries.
Prior to Chatham School Affair I had not read anything by Thomas Cook,
and did not know what to expect. But now having read it I am
pleased to report that I thoroughly enjoyed this book about a slice of life
(and death) in a small, conservative town in 1920s Coastal
Massachusetts. I have lived in small towns and villages (though none of
them were in the NE USA). From personal experience I am able to say
that Cook paints a believable word-picture of small town residents.
Cook's tale of an unmarried teacher's affair with a married male
colleague, and the ensuing tragedy, all of it as seen through the eyes
of a boy student, certainly kept my attention from start to finish.

At first I didn't like the author's use of flashbacks, but in no time at all I
came to see them as an effective tool for use in telling the story. Cook's
writing style is not "arty." Instead, his use of English is straightforward
and unencumbered. This reader took in the story effortlessly. It was as
if it was unfolding three-dimensionally and in color before my eyes.

My local library places this book in the Mystery shelves. I believe that
it would be more accurately placed among Contemporary Literature.

Chatham School is a moving story, expertly told. I usually shy away
from books having depressing themes; but this one is extraordinarily
good, and not at all off-putting. To Thomas Cook: "Good work."

My only complaint about the book is the simple story does not really seem to merit as many as 290+ pages the book contains. As a result of this, the story seems to drag a bit in the middle, where the author became a bit rhetorical about how the characters were being trapped and longed for freedom. He seemed to have tried to hammer the message into the readers' heads a bit too hard.

But over all, it's a very good book. It's actually not so much a suspenseful mystery as a simple but compelling story about the folly of life. By letting the readers witness the whole incident through the eyes of the adolescent Henry Griswald, Cook somehow makes us grow with Henry and learn a lesson with Henry: The more you try to defy, the more you will get hurt in the end; the more arrogant you let yourself be, the more stupid you will eventually feel.

The main theme of the book is well echoed by people's testimonies in the court raising nothing but circumstantial evidence against Channing and Reed. The jurors, and probably the readers as well, were encouraged to link all the dots in whatever way they pleased. Some tried to eagerly link the dots they saw with their wildest imaginations, seeing an exotic picture behind. But more often than not, the TRUE picture might be nothing more than just a mundane drawing of the most mediocre quality.

Recognizing this humbling truth is the core of the mystery of the book. In return, the mysterious way the truth is revealed makes this truth all the more compelling.

Some books lend themselves to discussion, and Thomas H. Cook's writing in "The Chatham School Affair" is perfectly suited to book-club group readings, particularly those attracted by presentation as well as plot. Classified alternately as mystery and suspense, Cook's fluid style fits comfortably with contemporary literature, and the haunting prose faultlessly complements his wind-blown Massachusetts coastal setting.
Narrated by an aging Henry Griswald, the story begins with his recollection on a new teacher's arrival in 1926 at the boy's school at which his father is headmaster. The young woman is both beautiful and mysterious, and the glamorous notions and exotic tales she includes as part of her daily art lessons quickly captivate young Henry.
It's clear, in his recounting of the events of his youth, that something devastating has occurred in Chatham, an event dramatic enough to alter forever the lives of the townspeople, and - even decades later - to incite casual references to those involved.
It isn't clear though, exactly what happened so many years ago.
Cook easily maneuvers between the present and memories of Henry's days as a student of Elizabeth Channing, and his portraits of the characters are so compelling that the intimation of tragedy seems almost incidental. As though revealed by ghosts flitting through the story, the cataclysmic event remains a mystery, and glimpses of the aftereffects provide the only clues as to what transpired that fateful day at Black Pond.
Even when Cook finally identifies his tragedy, he withholds enough cards to trump the initial surprise. The ending is startling and unconventional, and undoubtedly part of the reason "The Chatham School Affair" won awards from the mystery community.
It's a first rate novel, one that will create longtime fans of Thomas H. Cook, whose latest effort - "The Cloud of Unknowing" - is set for a January 2007 release.