Product Description

Orphaned, friendless and bewildered, young felix Latimer comes to war-time Jerusalem to lodge with Miss Bohun. This work is one of the most redoubtable (and ridiculous) of comic horrors in English fiction.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #431267 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 231 pages

Review
"'Here is a woman of unfathomable depths of meanness and cunning...a triumph of portraiture, compassionate, witty and assured' - Time and Tide; 'Distinctly out of the ordinary... School for Love shows remarkable qualities of force and originality' - Times Literary Supplement"

From the Publisher
From the most considerable of our women novelists a compelling portrait of a relationship between a young man and a matriarch.

About the Author
Olivia Manning, OBE, was born in Portsmouth, Hampshire, spent much of her youth in Ireland, and, as she puts it, had 'the usual Anglo-Irish sense of belonging nowhere'. The daughter of a naval officer, she produced her first novel, The Wind Changes, in 1937. She married just before the War, and went abroad with her husband, R.D. Smith, a British Council lecturer in Bucharest. Her experiences there formed the basis of the work which makes up The Balkan Trilogy. As the Germans approached Athens, she and her husband evacuated to Egypt and ended up in charge of the Palestine Broadcasting Station. They returned to London in 1946 and lived there until her death in 1980.

Customer Reviews

A much-neglected masterpiece
Manning is undoubtedly the most underrated of 20th-century novelists, and though her Balkan and Levant trilogies have been better treated of late, her other novels remain little read. School for Love is one of the best. Ms Bohun is a great dramatic creation whose machinations affect everyone else, from Felix, the little boy who becomes her lodger, to Mrs Ellis, the lodger who rebels, to Mr Jewel, the old soldier who, out of favour, inherits money enough to become the object of her attentions again. The core of the book is Felix's entry to premature adulthood, his vision of the world around him (Jerusalem after the war) altered for ever by Miss Bohun and Mrs Ellis. Manning proves here that, even without a war as backdrop, she could create terrific characters and a wide range of emotions.

A different sort of war time horror.
A young recentely orphaned boy, Felix, finds himself stuck in Jerusulem during the war. As he struggles to come to terms with the loss of his mother and burgeoning feelings towards a young widow he meets, Mrs Ellis, he has to deal with his fathers step sister and landlady Miss Bohun, leader of an unlikely cult and monsterous femme extrodinaire. Not above taking advantage of anybody whilst eliciting their sympathy's Miss Bohun is cold comfort for Felix, who must turn to her cat for affection. As the book progresses the readers feelings towards Miss Bohun turn from amusement to revuksion and back again with startling regularity. Althought the book addresses some heavy issues it is actually in parts a quite light hearted read, and whilst your heart strings are played mercilessly on occasion it is also a testimony to the bouyancey of human nature.

A small masterpiece
As someone else commented on these reviews, Olivia Manning is for some reason one of the most underrated of British writers.
This book is a small masterpiece. Nothing much happens in itself, just a glimpse of a handful of lonely people whose lives have become divorced from reality because of the war. Against the background of wartime Palestine, we see a portrait of the flotsam and jetsam of lost, aimless lives -the young, orphaned boy, and his coming of age. Mrs Ellis, the young pregnant widow, little more than a child herself. Nikky and his mother Mrs Lazlo, Jewish refugees noone really cares about. Miss Bohun, a lonely spinster. All of these and more are drawn with an intricate hand which reveal a small portrait of life itself. This book is highly recommended.