Customer Reviews

The Headmaster Ritual

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Its supposedly grand themes: absent fathers, making your way for yourself, gritty conflict (at personal and international levels), political ideology gone mad. True the book has these elements. I'm not sure I'd really call them themes since they pop in and out here and there as is convenient. They don't particularly parallel or reinforce each other into any particularly profound or coherent whole. They're just scattered about and the publisher's description wants us to think they're more meaningful than they are.

On the plus side the writing is often lively and with interesting details. The reading is detailed and somewhat addictive. The author succeeds in defining a mood for the boarding school, creating tension and making us want to find out what is going on.

I agree with other reviewers that the author is trying to portray a dark, supposedly "realistic" side to things that is supposed to be more profound than it actually is. This isn't Catcher in the Rye or Lord of the Flies, though. The power struggles, the bungled sexual desires and conquests make me think it should've been headier than it actually turns out to be.

It's very detail-rich, which is good at times, but less good at other times. Details to give realism are nice, but the author sometimes gives names and large paragraphs to characters that are relatively to completely unimportant (and are never seen again in any meaningful ways). There are too many characters introduced within the first 100 pages with few cues about which will later turn out to be important and which unimportant.

The book is a nice effort. I wanted to find out what happened and continued reading. The book was enjoyable, though perhaps needed some tightening and finesse.

Oh, by the way, if you go in expecting a dark comedy you'll be disappointed. It's not so much comedic as dark.

Quick plot summary: Fired from his sales job in LA, Dyer Martin heads east and lands a teaching position at a toney Philips Andover-like prep school where the story picks up. His universe becomes one of jocks & nerds. This age old precept carries the story with the bookish son of Headmaster Wolfe enduring teenage angst throughout the 300 pages. Professor Martin falls for a fellow faculty member, but she has some cloudy romantic past; the bookish son falls for pretty Jane, but Jane loves jocks. Angry Headmaster Wolfe, whose wife left him to go build nukes for the coming war on the Korean peninsula, is bent on his own secret mission of partnering with shady operatives from the Democratic People's Republic. Of Korea? Of Cambridge, MA? We can't be sure. The novel climaxes with the students participating in a model United Nations Conference in NYC. Sort of Jocks & Jills meet Guns & Butter.

Antrim is a good writer, and strings together very good descriptions of the prep school setting, homes in Boston & Knoxville, and especially New York City street scenes. But, A SEPARATE PEACE this is not. Similarly, anyone looking for a humorous read, (because it is promoted heavily by Christopher Buckley,) will be as disappointed as I.

I don't understand the negativity here. This book has so much to offer, not only about boarding school life and styles, but the subject matter about North Korea - to me, and probably most readers, was most illuminating. A little sex and scandal thrown in made the pages turn that much faster. If there is a sequel in the offing, I'll be ready for it.

I picked this up at the library and read it over 4 days. It's an entertaining story that alternates between a young teacher in a prep school and the son of the headmaster as they cope with the pressures of prep school life and of the radical headmaster. There's nothing particularly deep about it, but the writing is not bad and I had only good feelings about reading it. It's not really a 5 star book, but it's closer to 5 than 4 in my estimation, at least compared to most books I come across.

I don't really understand the negative reviews -- folks seem ticked off at how the book was marketed, which is really odd. (It isn't as though the author normally has any control over that.) The book certainly isn't in the same league as "A Separate Peace", but it's a good debut novel.

I can't understand some of the negative reviews here. True, like many excellent novels, The Headmaster Ritual takes some time to get into. But once you do, the rewards are ample. Instead of exploring the potentially lurid social life of prep school students and teachers, Antrim opens a window into their inner-lives and humanity and the personal struggles that fuel their feelings. This is deftly wrapped into a somewhat zany Tom Wolfe-esque plot involving of all things--the international politics of North Korea. Antrim writes with subtlety and restraint, never reaching for too much in a scene. His characters and action are always believable, and he avoids the sensational and gratuitous. This is an ambitious novel written with a masterly touch. If you give it time, you'll come to know the characters with fullness and feel for them, and you won't want to put the book down.

I've always appreciated well-written school stories so when I saw the dust jacket cover comments on this book, I was excited about this wonderful new writer. When I finally received the media-mailed book from an Amazon seller, I was immediately disappointed to meet its relatively unlikable protagonist in a story that was so tangential as to crush any serious drive the book had going for it. Knowing that my mood will occasionally clash with a good book, I put it down for a month. After picking it up again, I felt the same and still couldn't climb in. I'm not a reviewer, but am an avid reader of fiction and historical non-fiction. I believe that my views on this will coincide with other 30-somethings who went through prep school in New England. By the way, the artwork on the cover is lop-sided as was, in my view, the pre-publication bull**** that raved about this book. I'll rarely trust a dust jacket again.

I have to question if those who reviewed the book read it -- or if they have ever read the classics to which it was compared. Either way, this was a rather boring, clichéd book that had little depth, excitement, or accuracy with regard to prep school life or the lives of students. I kept reading with the hope that the plot would improve--no such luck. I put The Headmaster Ritual onto the shelf thinking "what a waste of time reading that dribble."

I don't understand the negative reviews. I really enjoyed this story and look forward to future works from the author. I think these reviews are particularly harsh and usually I do not comment on the opinion of other people.

I have to admit the only reason I didn't pass this book over in the store was because the marketing for it insulted me, my taste in books and my memory. I rarely pick up a book to read on the basis of looking for a fight, but THE HEADMASTER RITUAL wasn't about to let me pass without one... so, here I am, I'm still standing and the book is now heading for the FREE TO A GOOD HOME table at work - so, you may be asking, just what did this book do to insult me?

Well, I'll leave that to the blurb/review given to the book by CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY (THANK YOU FOR SMOKING), and I quote: "THE BEST NOVEL SET IN A BOARDING SCHOOL SINCE A SEPARATE PEACE. FOR MY MONEY, EVEN BETTER. A STUNNING DEBUT IN EVERY WAY." That one nearly knocked me off my feet when I read it in the store, for not only is A SEPARATE PEACE one of my all time favorite novels, but Buckley has the sheer brass to not only to compare the book to a "classic" (it's loved, it's hated, its lasted), but say outright that TAYLOR ANTRIM (this, his first novel) has done it one better, so much so that Buckley is willing to back his review with his own money (money he surely did not fork over to actually read the book, no, a free copy was provided for him by the publisher), so, tell me, where I can go to claim a portion of that "money" back offer? I can live with hype. I can live with hubris (just read the other two reviews under Buckley and ask yourself which of them has the brownest nose). I understand a publisher has to rattle the cages and ring the bells to get readers to notice their wares, but this was a low blow - so, I did the only nobel thing. I bought a copy and sat down to see if this, THE HEADMASTER RITUAL, was not only a good book, but one for the ages.

Simply put, no. And the only connection between A SEPARATE PEACE and this novel is the setting (a boarding school) and a ernest, but half hearted take on the theme war (what's it good for?). If anything, it's trying too hard to meld A SEPARATE PEACE (or, more directly its ill advised follow up PEACE BREAKS OUT) with two other established (and often banned) classics, A CATCHER IN THE RYE and THE HEADMASTER RITUAL's true father... THE CHOCOLATE WAR by Robert Cormier. While not beat for beat, or line for line, the skeleton of THE CHOCOLATE WAR sticks out just below the skin of this novel.

But, despite some nice writing (and few turn of phrases that does lead me to believe that Antrim may have a future), and an idea or two, the book too quickly resorts to cardboard plotting and stock scenery, moving the company to one set up to the next without really ever getting into either the hearts or minds of everyone involved. On occasion Antrim does reach (the entire model UN plot and North Korea is meant to be topical and drive home the point of just how much more profitable it is to sustain a "truce" than drive home for "peace"), and when the book is focused on the school itself, it shines (I kept wishing for more time on the dorm floor, campus and classrooms), while the rest tends to read weightless and disconnected. You will coast through this novel without breaking a sweat.

Overall, wouldn't it be nice to do away with the hype? It's true that I apporached this novel with a chip on my shoulder, but it did not color my view of the actual work (its connections to more famous works are clear), I was willing to lay down the cash and give it a chance. But, the selling of books these days has become so cut throat and so misleading that the blurbs and the reviews are often far better crafted and entertaining than the actual books they're hawking.

Enough.

The Headmaster Ritual is sharp and funny and sad in the tradition of Kingsley Amis' "Lucky Jim." It's full of lush prose and painfully well-wrought characters and it gave me a weird phantom nostalgia for my non-existent boarding school days. As has been pointed out by several others, Mr. Antrim is deft with the details -- he's really good at mapping emotions to the way people dress, act, talk, and generally stumble their way through the world.