Das verbotene Haus (original 2005; edition 2006)

I really enjoyed this excellent piece of writing. ( )

Fifth book for the readathon.

I normally love everything that Joanne Harris writes, but I found this one a bit too predictable, and the characters a bit too much like others. 'Julian' had shades of blueeyedboy, mostly. The whole pattern of the book, too, the steady undermining forces and the final triumph, that's familiar from her other books as well. I don't think I was surprised once.

She does evoke the school environment very well, at least to the mind of someone who attended a private school. And there are some very good lines, for example, this: "At thirteen, everything counts; there are sharp edges on everything, and all of them cut."

A fun read, but not a great one, and definitely not something I'll read again. ( )

Gentlemen and Players is about an English private school for boys, St Oswald’s. The first of two narrators for the story is the now grown up child of one of the school’s former porters who as a child was a frequent trespasser into the school grounds and is now a teacher at the school bent on revenge for the real and imagined harm done to them by the school. The second narrator is Roy Straitley a curmudgeonly Latin teacher at St Oswald’s 33 years who is no less obsessed with the school than the porter’s child. Between them these two narrators tell of the events which made such an impression on the porter’s child and also show two sides of the current events unfolding within the school’s hallowed halls.

The school is the main character in the book as well as the location for almost all of the plot development. And although that sounds as if it should make for an interesting twist on character-driven stories I found it quite boring at times. The notion that every student, teacher, parent and even the other people in the town who don’t attend the school would be so obsessed with and in awe of a relatively minor institution is fairly ludicrous. If it had only been the two narrators who were so consumed by all things St. Oswald’sian I think the story might have been more believable.

Neither of the two narrators are particularly interesting characters either: stereotyped as they are fairly early on. There certainly wasn’t a single surprise in anything Straitley said or did and, for me anyway, even the more enigmatic porter’s child had a fairly predictable story arc. The book relied heavily on a ‘shock’ twist that I thought blindingly obvious from several hundred pages before the big reveal which probably explains why I was more than a little bored.

In the end I was just never engaged by this book or the all-consuming world of St Oswald’s and I felt the author’s attempt at clever suspense was a bit too see-through. The potentially interesting themes, like the class differences between a porter’s child and the privileged boys of a private school, were handled superficially and so failed to add much to what was, in the end, a fairly dull reading experience for me. ( )

I was lucky enough not to be spoilt on the plot twist, so enjoyed this dark thriller - which has its lighter moments too - and was surprised towards the end. There are clues and red herrings to follow. I loved the character of Roy Straitley, so well written.

It took me a couple of goes to get into this book admittedly, thinking that it wasn't going to be very interesting, but once I was hooked I couldn't put it down and sacrificed precious sleep to finish it!

Set in an old grammar school, this book is about revenge, school systems, class and many other matters, all of which are cleverly woven together by Joanne Harris. Highly recommended. ( )

This cat-and-mouse thriller is atmospheric and darkly funny. The story takes place at St. Oswald's Grammar School for Boys, an old, tradition-steeped elite private school that is imbued with so much personality and history that it could be considered a principal character. The suspenseful narrative is structured like a game of strategy, and alternates between Roy Straitley, the aging Classics teacher, and the vengeful child of the former school porter, now come back ostensibly as a new teacher, but actually to maliciously engineer the downfall of the entire institution. Straitley narrates staff room political manoeuvres, student "types," and pompous administrative machinations with rapier wit and sharp-tongued Latin invectives. He is the hilarious heart and soul of the book and the school, but is suffering not-so-subtle insults and indignities that are forcing him to consider retirement. The new teacher recounts a difficult childhood literally in the shadows of St. Oswald's, which was the focus of longing and awe, but absolutely inaccessible, and therefore, irresistible. This character's narrative itself alternates between flashbacks of youth -- stolen uniforms used for illicit exploration and infiltration of St. Oswald's and desperate hunger for acceptance and belonging, to the present day plot using computer viruses, hacking, and murder as tools to infiltrate the school and serve up cold revenge. I was guessing until the end, and thought the book was very well done.