The English Teacher [Hardcover]

Lily King (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 26, 2005

With superb craftsmanship, effortlessly suspenseful pacing, and tenderly observed insight, Lily King expertly limns the life of an independent single mother and her fifteen-year-old son, who is on a circuitous path toward a truth she has long concealed from him. Fifteen years ago Vida Avery arrived alone and pregnant at elite Fayer Academy. 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. As Vida begins teaching her signature book, Tess of the D’Urbervilles, a 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. The English Teacher is a passionate tale of a mother and son’s vital bond and a provocative look at our notions of intimacy, honesty, loyalty, family, and the real meaning of home.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. A marriage of single parents is more often the stuff of sitcoms than of serious novels, but King (The Pleasing Hour) uses it to great effect in this intense character study. Single mother Vida Avery teaches English at an exclusive northeastern private high school and has a host of protective rituals that keep her life with adolescent son Peter basically on track; she also allows everyone, including boyfriend Tom, to think that she had been married to Peter's father. Peter, who has longed for an intact family, is thrilled when Vida accepts the proposal of Tom, a widower with three children—albeit in an ambivalent manner full of simmering private rage. Whiting winner King renders Vida's seething withholding in a free, direct style that captures everything from knowing responses toward a male co-worker ("who wanted to play jilted suitor, not because he had loved her, but because she had not loved him") to her dreams of killing Peter. She's also excellent on the children's reactions to each other as the households come together and then separate, dramatically and perhaps permanently. King keeps Vida in tight focus throughout, even as the wrenching story of Peter's conception slowly comes to light.
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From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Vida Avery teaches literature at a New England prep school. She arrived at its doors 15 years earlier with her baby and a mysterious past. She is considered the best English teacher at Fayer Academy and she maintains rigid control of her classroom, tolerating no tangents, personal discussion, or questions. She tries to keep that same control over her life, which is why she shocks everyone, including herself, by marrying Tom Belou, a widower with three children. Her teenaged son, Peter, is thrilled to be moving from their quarters on the campus to a real house with a real family, but he finds that his stepsiblings are still grieving for their mother. His mother's closely guarded emotional world begins to unravel and she suffers a complete breakdown. The 1980 Iran Hostage Crisis provides the backdrop for the story, paralleling Vida's sense of being a captive in her marriage, but the stronger metaphor is Thomas Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the tragic tale of an unwed mother, which Vida begins teaching the Monday after her wedding. Only when she reveals to Peter the truth about their past can any healing begin. King's engaging writing beautifully illuminates the complicated relationships and emotions of everyone involved. It is a story of isolation, patience, and love, and of people trying to find comfort in one another. The author's style is unsentimental and direct, and the compelling story draws readers right in.-Susanne Bardelson, Kitsap Regional Library, WA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press (July 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0871138972
• ISBN-13: 978-0871138972
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,533,021 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lily King grew up in Manchester, Massachusetts. She received her B.A. in English Literature from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her M.A. in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. She has taught English and Creative Writing at several universities and high schools in this country and abroad.
Lily's first novel, THE PLEASING HOUR (1999) won the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and was a New York Times Notable Book and an alternate for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her second, THE ENGLISH TEACHER, was a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year, a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, and the winner of the Maine Fiction Award. FATHER OF THE RAIN, her third novel, was published in July, 2010. A few weeks after publication, it won the New England Book Award for Fiction. It is a New York Times Editor's Choice, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, an Indie Next Selection, and on O the Oprah Magazine's 2010 Summer Reading List.
Lily is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and a Whiting Award. Her short fiction has appeared in literary magazines including Ploughshares and Glimmer Train, as well as in several anthologies.
For more information--reviews, interviews, appearance locations and dates, reading recommendations, and more--visit Lily at lilykingbooks.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "This was the nameless emotion she felt most in life, this abrasion of love meeting anger", March 11, 2006

By 

Cassie W. (Ohio) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The English Teacher (Hardcover)

Lily King's second novel is called THE ENGLISH TEACHER, and that's what her main character, Vida Avery, is. And that's about all Vida is; it's her whole identity, what she's built her life on. Fifteen years ago, Vida came to Fayer, an island off the coast of Maine, pregnant and with a terrible secret trailing her all the way from Texas. She got a job as an English teacher at the island's prestigious private school, and she gave birth to a son, Peter. For fifteen years, mother and son live in isolation (isolated from each other, and isolated from the rest of the world), until one day, a man named Tom Belou, a widower with three children, enters their lives. He asks Vida to marry him--and although she wants to refuse, she says yes. Peter, for his part, couldn't be happier about the marriage. For years, he's been trying to understand his mother, to forge some kind of relationship with her, to be a family with her--and he believes that, with the addition of a father figure and three new siblings, he and his mother will finally become a real family.

But Peter hadn't counted on the lingering presence of the former Mrs. Belou in their new home; her picture still graces the bathroom wall, her clothes are still in the basement, she lives on the lips of her three children. Still feeling isolated, Peter slips into daydreams of Mrs. Belou--of what it would have been like to have her for a mother, instead of his withdrawn, unstable one.

During the first month of her marriage, Vida begins teaching TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES to her sophomore English classes. She's taught the book for fifteen years, but suddenly she's seeing the parallels to her own life clearly. Vida, paralyzingly scared of living life, collapsing from within, retreats farther into a comforting bottle of bourbon; but rather than seeming farther away, her past seems to haunt her even more--and now Peter's demanding to know the devastating truth about his father.

THE ENGLISH TEACHER is startling in its simplicity, yet astonishing in its depth. It's an intense character study and a study of the complicated relationship between a mother and her son; it's Peter's coming-of-age story; it's the story of Vida's renewal. Both of King's protagonists are brilliant creations, and she keeps her focus tightly on them throughout the novel. Peter is an endearing teenage boy, confused and sexualized and curious, trying desperately to fit in with his stepsiblings and his peers. Vida is angry, detached, and desperate, a woman who's more attuned with the characters she reads about than her own life. Like the Iranians who are taken hostage on Vida's wedding day in 1979, Vida is a hostage, trapped in her own life. Vida has her alcohol, and Peter has his dreams of Mrs. Belou; but the one thing they can't escape from is each other.

King prose is understated but powerful, intimate, almost sensual. Her parallelism is brilliant. THE ENGLISH TEACHER is a novel rife with allusions to other novels and just the right amount of metaphoric language. While I would have liked to see more focus on the relationship between Vida and Tom, I thought King's portrayal of a blended family was spot-on. Her characters are perfectly nuanced; her prose is beautiful. THE ENGLISH TEACHER is definitely a novel to be reckoned with in the contemporary women's fiction genre, and I'd definitely recommend it. Lily King has captivated another reader, who will wait with excitement for her next offering.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A True Treasure, January 23, 2006

By 

Michael DiSchiavi (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The English Teacher (Hardcover)

The English Teacher by Lily King presents us with a simply written novel of deeply moving significance. The protagonist, Vida, is a high school english teacher more in tuned to the characters from the novels she teachers than to her students or family.

As the novel opens, Vida has just married Tom. It is clear that this is not a marriage built on high romance, at least not where Vida is concerned. She has considerable trouble adjusting to this new life she has created for herself. Vida is not the only person having trouble adjusting, either. Tom has his own children and Vida has a son, Peter. They all struggle to accept this brand new family. However, this is not the Brady Bunch retold in the form of a novel. Each character here has her or his own issues to work through by the last page.

Vida clearly is burdened; she possesses a powerful secret. Her ambivilence to everyone around her is deeply disturbing to family and friends. As they struggle to find the "real" Vida beneath the alcohol haze she has submerged herself into, she comes to terms with who she is.

There is another character who, although deceased, plays an important role in the book. Mary, Tom's first and late wife, is omnipresent in the lives of the characters, even for Vida and Peter, who never met her. Mary's picture hangs in Tom's house (in the bathroom, of all places)and her presence is felt by all.

All of this makes for a novel filled with allusions to Victorian novels and discussions of innermost feelings. It is a book to be read and re-read. Do not miss this book!

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Tough and Hopeful Tale, August 31, 2005

By 

Reader (Montecito CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The English Teacher (Hardcover)

Lily King is not a sentimental writer. Nor is she a particularly modern one. Her style is rooted in the love and power of language. Her gifts for dialogue and visual and interior description are powerful.

This is a beautifully written book about grief and pain and yearning. It is also about the challenges of families that loss puts together, and how they develop strands of love and respect.