Product Description

At fifteen, Terry Flynn had the face of an angel and the body of a perfect athlete...Set in a small boarding school on the eve of America's entry into World War Two, "A Good School" tells the story of William Grove, the nervous teenager trying to fit in; the betrayed alcoholic, Jack Draper; and, Edith Stone, the teacher's daughter, who falls in love with the most popular boy in school. Instantly acclaimed on its first publication, peopled with some of Richard Yates' most memorable characters, this tender, spare masterpiece is a haunting meditation on the twilight of youth, and an unforgettable description of the impact of war on the lives of an innocent generation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37200 in Books
• Published on: 2007-12-13
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Independent
'One of his later novels and his best... Written in measured, precise prose, it deals out mortification and humiliation with an even hand.'

About the Author
Richard Yates was born in 1926 in New York and lived in California. His prize-winning stories began to appear in 1953 and his first novel, Revolutionary Road, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1961. He is the author of eight other works, including the novels A Good School, The Easter Parade, and Disturbing the Peace, and two collections of short stories, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love. He died in 1992.

Customer Reviews

The Best School of Writing
The most autobiographical novel of an author who specialises in such an approach to fiction, A Good School is not the best book by Yates but is still better than most. For those of you not yet familiar with this superb writer, can I urge you to lose no more time in discovering him? Actually this is no mean place to start an exploration of his oeuvre for although published in 1978, it takes as its inspiration Yates's own school days in the early to mid forties and much can be learnt of the author and his later preoccupations from this fictionalised account. In elegant and effortless prose Yates quickly paints a world and a cast of characters which you very rapidly find yourself caring about, the human perception and emotional honesty which typifies all his writing is here in spades. The best trick of the book is the skill with which Yates manages to evoke that dualistic approach many of us adopt in looking back on our schooldays-which as here can often be riven with feelings of inadequacy, bullying, struggles for status and personal tragedy-yet somehow still coating them with the haze of nostalgia for a lost idealism and the energy of youth. In Yates's unsentimental hands teachers and boys live and hurt, learning that the certainties of youth are anything but: school offering a glimpse of a troubled future. Recommended to all and as a stepping stone to the great Revolutionary Road and Young Hearts Crying

A Novella with much to recommend it
A Good School is a semi-autobigraphical novella/slim book that has much to recommend it. It is Yates doing what he does best: describing in spare, economical prose the fragile often wounded psyches of a group of American boys and their teachers: the storyline is deceptively simple but utterly absorbing. Like so much of Yates' writing this is a little gem with its exquisitely honed prose, the deliberate understatement of emotion only serving to highlight the underlying agonies and confusion of impressionistic youth. It is not my favourite book by Yates but it has much to recommend it.

A Strangely Haunting Little Book
A Good School follows the lives of various characters from a group of (mostly) WASP school boys at a New England prep school in the years leading up to, and directly following Pearl Harbour. It covers similar themes to other prep school stories such as Catcher In The Rye and has a strong sense of pathos running through much of the book. A Good School is under 170 pages long so it's not an epic multi-layered story, it is however a beautifully crafted book, the prose is very tight and there's not a word out of place.