"Gentlemen and Players" by Joanne Harris

EDIBTB reader Haleh recently sent me an email with high praise for a book she is reading: Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris. Haleh is a prolific and critical reader, so I know it must be good. (I am going to overlook the fact that Harris wrote Chocolat, the book from which the horribly overrated movie was made. Ugh). From Amazon:

For generations, privileged young men have attended St. Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, groomed for success by the likes of Roy Straitley, the eccentric Classics teacher who has been a fixture there for more than thirty years. This year, however, the wind of unwelcome change is blowing, and Straitley is finally, reluctantly, contemplating retirement. As the new term gets under way, a number of incidents befall students and faculty alike, beginning as small annoyances but soon escalating in both number and consequence. St. Oswald's is unraveling, and only Straitley stands in the way of its ruin. But he faces a formidable opponent with a bitter grudge and a master strategy that has been meticulously planned to the final, deadly move.

This isn't a book I would have picked up on my own at the bookstore, but the more I read about it the better it sounds. Here is a long user review from the Classic Book Club site. A few excerpts:

It is an unusual style, and at times I found it difficult to follow, but there is no denying it is perfect for capturing the reader’s attention. This is definitely a book I intend to read again, now fore-armed with knowledge of the character’s history and place in the story.

The novel displays revenge as a very strong and overwhelming force... Revenge is as strong as love for not allowing us to see the truth clearly.

There is a fantastic twist in the book. I began to get a suspicion of the truth towards the end of the book and then could see clues plainly displayed everywhere - they were obviously being displayed throughout the entire book, but so subtly that, unless you guessed the twist, they weren’t apparent. Extremely clever!

From the Vidalia's Books blog:

It's a new school year at St Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, bringing with it the annual batch of new teachers, one of whom is a relentless psychopath intent on destroying this bastion of upperclass education. Roy Straitley - eccentric, intelligent, beloved Classics instructor - has been a fixture at St Oswald's for almost thirty years. Devoted to the school and to his boys, Straitley eventually is the only obstacle preventing the ultimate ruin of the school, staff and students. The story unfolds through three voices:

• Straitley
• the malicious, vengeful and cunning new arrival
• Snyde, the child that the once was our villain

Gentlemen and Players underscores the class differences inherent in the British social system - differences that the young Snyde felt acutely and that produced the monster plotting the utter annihilation of St Oswald's and those who love it. Snyde's story is particularly riveting, and the mystery as to the identity of the grown-up evil-doer is maintained until the very end. Straitley's voice is truly a treat to read - he's a witty, stubborn old luddite with a soft heart. Harris' writing really brings him to life. I could hear his accent and inflections as I read the words on the page. Gentlemen is beautifully composed. Characterization is excellent, the plot is compelling and if you're not really, really attentive to detail, the end is quite surprising.

Here is a review from The Washington Post which is also quite favorable.

I skimmed a few other reviews but they seem to contain spoilers, so I won't link to them from here.

Please weigh in (sans spoilers!) if you have read Gentlemen and Players.

Comments

[Joy]

I loved this book! You can read my thoughts here:

http://tinyurl.com/3p4nnz

[Susan]

Hi,
I don't know if this is proper, but can I recommend a book that I just finished?
The Outcast by Sadie Jones
I feel as though I should be her publicist-this is a great debut novel.
The characters are well drawn, the story is compelling, and I can't do it justice here.

[Heather]

I read this book for my English class since my teacher enjoyed it so much, and I was really surprised. The first half is pretty slow, but the ending twist is amazing and makes the whole book sooo worth it.

[matt]

i really dug this book. i picked it up because i'm intrigued by authors that create a protagonist of the opposite sex, and it was 4 bucks at borders. a bargain book that kept the pages turning. twist was foreseeable (i had finalized my guess before the halfway point, and was right) but the end was satisfying nonetheless. a fine read - def pick it up.

[Tony Joyce]

I am trying to enjoy Runemarks and am succeedingly a little. But...and it's a big but for a Harris fan, I'm getting worried about her dark side. I feel that this time she has gone a tad too far.She seems determined to attack anything Christian. I've seen this before in her obsession with witchcraft. Of late, she seems to deliberately bend so many truths with wrong references and incorrectly citing the rapture and the tribulation. Her reference to the word is clearly the bible and the book reference interestingly is 6.6.6 which is the sign of the devil/beast. Perhaps she is mimicking Dan Brown and all of his trash!which is a pity because she can do better than that. Putting this aside, she cleverly threads together a story of intrigue, deception and double deception, making the bad guys the good guys and vise versa. I have a sneaky suspicion that she was probably taught by nuns and is using her writing to try and get back at them. I further suspect that she is propbably not even aware that she is doing it! I wish she would just get on with the business of writing a good book and leave her religious venom out of it.