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Gentlemen and Players A Novel Joanne Harris 9780060559144 Books

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Gentlemen and Players A Novel Joanne Harris 9780060559144 Books

This clever novel has just been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe award by the Mystery Writers of America, and it's easy to see why. St. Oswald's, an exclusive British boy's school, is the scene of a deadly contest between a dedicated old "Mr. Chips"-type teacher and a mysterious newcomer to the faculty. Each opponent tells the story in alternating chapters, and it soon becomes clear that the evil interloper has a beef with the place dating back to childhood. This new teacher is secretly waging an insidious campaign of terror against St. Oswald's, the clear intent being to bring the famous school down and close its doors forever. And only our hero--a fussy, eccentric, out-of-shape old-timer--can stop the tragedy, if he can find his anonymous adversary in time....

Harris (CHOCOLAT, FIVE QUARTERS OF THE ORANGE) hits the ground running with her first suspense novel, and it's as funny as it is bizarre, a truly black comedy. A former teacher in a Brit boys' school, Harris knows the institutions and their people very well. She has a marvelous way of describing everything, and her names for the characters are particularly Dickensian. The heroic teacher is named Straitley, the villain is named Snyde, and other teachers and students are appropriately named Meek, Strange, Knight, Bishop, Devine, Fallow, Brasenose, Shakeshafte, etc. She makes you feel that you're actually there, in the school, witnessing the "game." Highly recommended.


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Gentlemen and Players A Novel Joanne Harris 9780060559144 Books Reviews

This book is WORK to read. There were moments when I wanted to give up, but because it was a bookclub selection, I kept on. I was pleased to have read it in the end because it was an accomplishment. There were some very clever concepts that I appreciated in the story, I just wonder if it was necessary to make the structure so difficult for the reader.
This novel plays into so many things I love it's suspenseful without being gory, it takes its time unfolding the plot and characters, and it's set in a school. If you enjoy classic "school mysteries" such as George's Well-Schooled in Murder, Player's The Ingenious Mr. Stone, and Christie's Cat Among the Pigeons, I predict you'll really enjoy Gentlemen and Players.

Set at St. Oswald's, an exclusive British day-school for boys, this novel has two narrators who take it in turns to describe events past and present. One of them is an elderly Latin teacher at the school, an endearingly flawed character I find very sympathetic. The other is the child of a former porter at the school, who offers a different perspective on events. The writing is very tight, though the voices aren't perhaps as distinct as they might be. But this is a page-turner, and you will find yourself unable to keep from reading just one more short segment -- until hours have passed, of course!

Because it's a mystery, I will give no spoilers except to say that this is more like a Golden Age novel than a contemporary slash-em-up. There is nothing here you couldn't let a high-school student read (and it would make a good gift for a mystery-loving teenager, I think), and the insights and adventures all ring very true. The portraits of the teachers and other school personnel are particularly well done, though they aren't the focus of the action; anyone who has taught in any setting will recognize them, as well as chime with Harris's comments about keeping discipline, motivating a class, and other matters of the classroom.

Put Gentlemen and Players right at the top of your nightstand reading pile. It's thoroughly engrossing and a pleasure from start to finish! Highly recommended.
"If there's one thing I've learned in the past fifteen years, it's this that murder is really no big deal." So speaks the "pawn" in the opening sentence of Gentlemen & Players, a brilliant and suspenseful literary novel that reminds one of Donna Tartt's The Secret History, Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

On page 333 of the novel, the pawn speaks again "Just the place for a quiet murder, don't you think? The dark; the crowds; the confusion. So easy here to apply Poe's law--stating that the object that is hidden in plain sight remains unseen longest--and to simply walk away, leaving the body for some poor baffled soul to discover, or even to discover it myself, with a cry of alarm, relying upon the inevitable crowd to shield me from sight. . . . One more murder. I owe it to myself. Or maybe two."

St. Oswald's Grammar School for Boys in northern England is a posh institution that caters to the scions of the wealthy. With a long tradition of academic excellence, elitism, and snobbery, its stately campus looms as a forbidden zone for the underprivileged and poor "No Trespassers. No Unauthorized Entry Beyond This Point." Trespassers will be prosecuted.

Laws are made to be broken. Every rule, order, and command gives birth to rebels who challenge the authoritative edicts of the status quo, to misfits who gleefully throw monkey wrenches into the machine. The "pawn" is one such outsider, who, fuming at the arbitrary line drawn between the haves and the have-not's, is determined to bring down this pretentious institution.

"These people are so easily blinded," muses the pawn. "Even greater than their stupidity, there's the arrogance, the certainty that no one would cross the line."

Don't be misled by the illustration on the book's cover, that of a king and a pawn. This novel is not about chess per se, but Joanne Harris sustains the chess analogy throughout the book's chapters Pawn, King, Knight, En Passant, Check, Bishop, Queen, and Mate.

The "king" in Roy Hubert Straitley, 65, an eccentric professor of classical languages (Latin and Greek) who has given St. Oswald's 33 years of loyal service--three forms per year, and who, unless he is forced into retirement (or killed), seeks to become a "Centurion," one who has taught a hundred forms,

Straitley teaches "my boys" (as he calls them) the subtleties of Horace, the perils of the ablative absolute, and the meaning of phrases such as "Audere, agere, auferre" (To dare, to strive, to conquer), which is the school's motto, and which becomes the battle cry of both the king and the pawn, who soon become locked in mortal combat.

The pawn, self-proclaimed "Lord of Misrule," also embraces another Latin motto "Illegitimi non carborundum" (Don't let the bastards grind you down).

The pawn, an intelligent but hitherto invisible sociopath, looks in the mirror and sees the reflection of a talented artist, someone who wants to be seen, noted, and appreciated "A talent like mine begs to be acknowledged." And like all artists, the pawn likes to provoke.

True, the pawn begins the game as a weak player, but ambitiously seeks promotion to a more powerful piece. It's David vs. Goliath, and a well-placed stone can bring down a giant.

Harris divides her novel into (more or less) alternating chapters, in which we see the pawn, a cunning enemy who sows tares among the wheat, intuitively concocting Machiavellian gambits, nice little pieces of antisocial engineering, to destroy St. Oswald's. Then, in turn we see the king, who laments, "O tempora! O mores! Horatio at the bridge, single handedly holding back the barbarian hordes. . . . There's a Jonah on board. If only I knew who it was."

Although the pawn despises St. Oswald's, Roy Straitley earns a grudging respect "A slow mover, the king; but a powerful enemy. Even so, a well-placed pawn may bring him down."

Joanne Harris is the author of six other books Chocolat; Blackberry Wine; Five Quarters of the Orange; Coastliners; Holy Fools; and Jigs & Reels. Half French half British, she lives in England.

Unless you are better skilled than I at solving whodunits, the revelation of the pawn's identity will come as a stunning surprise; it will knock your socks off. From the opening, to the middle game, to the endgame of Gentlemen & Players, one is impressed by the intelligenct and ingenious plot of Joanne Harris' totally engrossing story.
This clever novel has just been nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe award by the Mystery Writers of America, and it's easy to see why. St. Oswald's, an exclusive British boy's school, is the scene of a deadly contest between a dedicated old "Mr. Chips"-type teacher and a mysterious newcomer to the faculty. Each opponent tells the story in alternating chapters, and it soon becomes clear that the evil interloper has a beef with the place dating back to childhood. This new teacher is secretly waging an insidious campaign of terror against St. Oswald's, the clear intent being to bring the famous school down and close its doors forever. And only our hero--a fussy, eccentric, out-of-shape old-timer--can stop the tragedy, if he can find his anonymous adversary in time....

Harris (CHOCOLAT, FIVE QUARTERS OF THE ORANGE) hits the ground running with her first suspense novel, and it's as funny as it is bizarre, a truly black comedy. A former teacher in a Brit boys' school, Harris knows the institutions and their people very well. She has a marvelous way of describing everything, and her names for the characters are particularly Dickensian. The heroic teacher is named Straitley, the villain is named Snyde, and other teachers and students are appropriately named Meek, Strange, Knight, Bishop, Devine, Fallow, Brasenose, Shakeshafte, etc. She makes you feel that you're actually there, in the school, witnessing the "game." Highly recommended.