Customer Reviews

Schooling

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

A brand new style of coming of age novel. Heather McGowan deserves kudos, as do her publishers, for the bravery it took to select this book as a first novel. It's not an easy read, written in stream of consciousness with minimal paragraphing and punctuation. After reading maybe 5 pages, I admit I flipped through the rest of the book to see if it was ALL written like this (it was), then sighed and figured I was in for 'an experience.' One reviewer suggested reading it aloud, and I tried that with a page or two: it works very well. You have to be in a certain frame of mind to fall under the spell of this book - relaxed, trusting, and open to new experiences. When you get tripped up, as I did and as you will, with the lyricism of the writing in long looping-back-upon-themselves sentences, don't stop and reread - just go for it, keep reading along and letting the music and images carry you on this journey between childhood and adolescence.
Okay. Enough about the style of the writing (experimental, I think, describes it well). The story is great. Catrine, a 13yo from Maine whose mother has recently died, is sent to a boarding school north of London that her father went to during WWII. He reminisces with her about the wonderful experiences he had there and about the excellent education she can expect to receive.
Catrine, however, has a different experience, exposed to hazing, cruelty, cynicism, and the difficulty of always living as an outsider. She is troubled by the realization that she and a friend from her childhood may have caused a death, and she is confused by her the attentions shown to her by Mr. Gilbert, her chemistry teacher and the one person who seems to consider her special. Good stuff.
I'll be curious to see in what style McGowan writes her next book.

I read this book when it was first released, it did not make a great impact on me immediately, but over time "Schooling" has reappeared in my thoughts numerous times. So, I had to write this review after reading that miserable griping below. Yes this book can seem a bit pretentious (i.e. inaccessible) at times, but "Schooling" is nonetheless fey, witty, and unforgettable. Yes, fey and witty. No kidding. This is not your typical coming of age adolescent girl coming of age novel about (...) boyfriends. Thankfully, McGowan's heroine is clever and vulnerable-- and the adults (her father, a teacher who has an inappropriate interest in her) surrounding her possess a combination of longing and nostalgia that is at times heartbreaking. And the other kids in the novel are, well, like kids. funny, brutal, smart, goofy. like we all were or are at one time or another. Yes there are moments when McGowan's words will seem foggy, you may need to re-read a passage here and there, but it is ultimately rewarding. A beautiful novel. Buy it and put a little money in this wonderful novelist's pocket so she will write another.

I wrote the starred review of Schooling in Booklist Magazine (you can read it above in the 'editorial reviews' section), and I have to take issue with people who say that the book is too difficult, or that it offers little in the way of ample rewards. Schooling was as good as any first novel I can remember reading in all of my time reviewing at Booklist.

The complaint that's always made about literary fiction, and that has been leveled at everyone since James Joyce, is that it's just pure ostentation, a sort of "look ma no hands" linguistic showmanship. That's not, however, why McGowan's book is difficult. The book is difficult to read -- at least at first -- because it is an entirely refreshing reading experience. Because the novel's central character Catrine, is young, and because she is scared and small and growing into an understanding of herself, she is inarticulate.

But despite her inability to articulate words or thoughts, we come to know Catrine very intimately, and MacGowan manages to make her inarticulate thoughts and words the stuff of great literary fiction.

The book can be difficult to read, because it is unlike most books (more challenging in structure than even, say, DFW's Infinite Jest). But eventually McGowan gets you inside Catrine's head, and once that happens, it's no different than any other absorbing reading experience.

Is there adequate payoff for the challenge? I'd say so. I'd say that Ms. McGowan is an enormous literary talent, that her explorations of memory, childhood, and life ont he outside are as compelling as any I've read. If the final message fails to deliver a knock out punch to some readers, I'd say that maybe that's because the messages we can garner from living and schooling are, like Catrine, utterly inarticulate.

I opened this much-heralded book with the best of intentions. I am accustomed to difficult texts and had anticipated being challenged and invigorated by McGowan's story based on the ample advance publicity "Schooling" had engendered. Unfortunately, I found that the effort I expended in reading the book failed to be adequately rewarded. A book this stylistically inclined should have a grand theme to sustain, to sweep the reader along, to enable him or her to lie back with languid passion and husk, "Take me...I'm yours..." McGowan's tome got a cranky "Oh, all right!" out of me, at best. I think it's a book from a young lady with a lot of potential, plus perhaps a lot of personal problems she needs to work out. I'm looking forward, though hardly holding my breath, to her next. Heaven only can help us if it's "Graduate Schooling," or "Left Back"!

With tremendous anticipation, I opened this book on a recent plane trip. The reviews in multiple sources were stellar and, as a voluminous reader, I looked forward to the challenge and stimulation of something different and intelligent. I was frustrated beyond description at my inability to fall into the flow of this story. Sure that the narrative would gel, I read on and on, but ultimately tossed the book into the wastecan with a sense of defeat. Perhaps my sensibilities have been dulled by years in the legal profession or I am too far removed from adolescence; this story didn't get through to me on any level.

Some authors step up boldly, attempt a new style, a new kind of character...they don't worry about whether they "baby" the reader through the story, or whether the story itself pulls the reader along on a trip that the reader either accepts or denies. Like Joyce, Woolf, and Pynchon, McGowan tries and succeeds at bringing a new and innovative voice to fiction. If you don't like it...well too bad.

Reading and then re-reading this book last year was a thrilling literary experience.

I picked up the book just on the strength of the cover - I hadn't read the reviews, which is the way I prefer it - and although I found it tricky to get into, am so glad I stuck with it. The stream of consciousness narrative draws you in so expertly that I felt nostalgic for a world I'd never inhabited. I'm British but to see the UK through American eyes was incredibly interesting - stuffy, old-fashioned bunch that we are - but to also see it through the eyes of a stroppy teenager and want to be there is an amazing skill on the part of Heather McGowan

All I can suggest to the negative reviewers below is to suggest that you try again, unless you want your literature on a plate.

Astonishing piece of work.

i read a review of this book in my newspaper. they called it 'jane eyre on mushrooms.' i had to check it out. and it rocks! i loved it so much. i'm only seventeen but this book really captured how #$%^ it is when you're a smart, curious girl and you're surrounded by people who want you to shut up. i mean there was more going on than that. it was just really beautiful amd intense and i think you should all read it and weep!!!! peace out.

Try reading this book aloud if you're having any difficulty reading it to yourself. Once you actually engage your speaking voice you'll find that McGowan's prose style really blooms and shines. It's an uncanny experience; the melodies and rhythms of her sentences are extremely sophisticated and draw you in like a cello suite. After reading Gert Hofmann's "Luck" and Eliza Minot's "The Tiny One" (both, like "Schooling," use children as narrators)I'd have to say she's by far the better of the three at handling this difficult narrative technique. I can't wait to read her next novel.

Perhaps if I were a professional reviewer I would be able to make more sense of this book. Perhaps it's just too much for "regular" readers like myself. I brought it home because writers I admire (Anne Hoffman, Rick Moody, and, Jonathan Letham) had said it was a special and wonderful experience for them. Booklist recommended it without hesitation. And yet I feel as if this book is a private joke for those who, unlike many of us, have had the luxury of studying every literary movement of the last fifty years or so. I felt totally left out. I remember stream of consciousness and I read Beckett in college and I think of myself as a sophisticated and well informed person but here I am shaking my head and placing the book in the shopping bag in the front hall that we fill with used children's toys, old clothes, and other items we bring to the local used toy/clothing/item store. Maybe I should have become a professional book reviewer and then I could like the book more. Instead I became an architect. Go figure. I like books that have, well, a certain architecture to them, not just streams of words and confusing adolescent girl thoughts. Maybe it's me, maybe I'm not smart enough for this book. Maybe it's because I'm not an adolescent girl. I tried hard and I gave it to my wife, who once was an adolescent girl, and she tried a few pages and said "Maybe next time" in that voice which means "No Way!" It's not like we don't read, here. We're pretty literate. We're also pretty busy and have lives that demand more than reading every experimental book that comes down the pike and then writing what seems like a blatant imitation of those books. Maybe we're dumber than we think. I hate it when a book makes me feel that way.