The Chatham School Affair

After reading reviews after I read this book, I recommend that anyone planning to read this book not read the reviews first. Some, including here, in my mind give away too much. Others have the potential to slant how you approach this book. I am glad I wasn't starting with those slants. Now, having said that, you may want to stop reading here - because I am going against my advice and adding a few notes.

Yes, this a mystery, perhaps a thriller. I think it was equally a psychological novel - a tragedy. I think that the stories of each of these people, their choices, the motivations behind their choices, then the impact of those choices - all of that is fascinating. And then set that in a particular kind of culture (rules, organization, show more expectations, etc.) up against another particular kind of culture (passion, freedom, etc.) - the two (or more) running into each other and see what happens. How does one navigate those various pulls without falling off the path? And what happens when you are trying to navigate that when you are a teenager? That is what is interesting. I didn't find the book too drawn out. I thought the way that the clues and stories fell and then came together at the end intriguing. show less

Quickly read mystery centering on a boy's school on Cape Cod in the 1920's. The headmaster's son and our narrator relates his involvement with a newly arrived beautiful art teacher and a relationship she may or may not have had with another married teacher. The tragic consequences of this relationship become what as known as "the Chatham school affair." Is the whole truth really known?

It was pretty good especially at the begininng, the writing was compelling and the stage was set chillingly. However, as time went by - many scenes were quite repetitive, the forshadowing became too heavy-handed, and some characters especially Henry became hard to believe in. I also feel as if more attention needed to be paid to the cultural details of the show more small town American setting in the early 20th century -- we needed to feel more scandalized by potential adultery.

So while it sucked me in and kept me turning the pages -- ultimately, a bit predictable and a sense of "oh, thats it." A nice melancholy atmosphere though and a fine vacation read. show less

Henry is a student at Chatham School. His father is the headmaster who hires a beautiful and intelligent Elizabeth Channing as the art teacher. Henry is quite taken with Miss Channing's stories and her independent spirit and begins to believe that his life is boring and staid and wishes for the freedom to do as he pleases. Miss Channing and another teacher, Mr. Reed, who is married and the father of a young daughter, fall in love, and the story quickly turns dark. Henry sees them as a romantic couple who should be set free to live life with each other, and with words he very much lives to regret, he sets in motion tragic and fatal events that still haunt him when he is an old man and the narrator of the story. Excellent writing with a show more great twist at the end. show less

It's not your typical who-dun-it and you'll need some patience at the beginning. But I couldn't put it down and the writing style fit perfectly with the setting of the 1920s.

[b:The Chatham School Affair|863118|The Chatham School Affair|Thomas H. Cook|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1178997839s/863118.jpg|848545] is a psychological suspense novel with the narrator looking back at events that took place fifty or so years previously, when he was a teenager. It is set on Cape Cod. If I had not been reading it as part of my Edgar Best Novels Project, I probably would not have finished it. Not that it was not well written, for it was. But since the story is told in the first person, it is the narrator who is the most fully realized character, and I found him self-centered and impossible to like. The story is certainly unusual and there is quite a bit of philosophizing by several of the characters. Some of their show more philosophies are better than others. There are many people who like this sort of thing, and to them I can recommend this book. I, however, did not find it edifying and can safely skip Mr. Cook's other books (the edition I read had an opening chapter from a subsequent book and I could tell I wouldn't like that either.) show less

The Chatham School Affair occurs in 1927. Elizabeth Channing's father had just died and she had come to Chatham School to be the new art teacher. Her father was a free thinker who believed that the passion an artist feels must be the artist's guide not the morals of others that are there only as a restraiant on the spirit of the artist.. The head master's 15 year old son, Henry Griswald is someone who already feels the suffocation of his own father's world and wants desperately to escape. When Ms. Channing begins a relationship with a fellow teacher who is married and has a child, Henry becomes their ally and wants them to be able to escape from Chatham and all the restraints he feels. This is the simple story that is The Chatham School show more Affair.

There are two ways that the reader can look at this story. The first is the normal view that the author, Thomas H. Cook wrote the book and is solely responsible for the story. From the viewpoint, there is a heavy sense of foreboding from the very first page with the now almost 90 year old narrator, Henry Griswald, slowly telling the story in retrospect. The author tells the story in a very evocative, beautiful fashion, slowly having Henry divulge the secrets from 7 decades earlier. There is a very real sense of withholding information from the reader that is essential for the purpose of increasing the suspense for the reader. But at times this almost feels like the author does not actually have enough story to fill-up his book and is trying to stretch the story out long enough to still have something left to divulge when we get to the end. That in fact the foreshadowing of what will eventually occur feels heavy handed at times, even overwrought and repetitive.

The second way of looking at the story is to see the writer of the story as actually being Henry Griswald, not Thomas H. Cook. What this does is change how the reader views the telling of the story. If Thomas Cook is the writer, he is just using Henry as a device to tell his story to us and the deliberately slow pace and the stretching out of the story end up being frustrating to the reader at times. But if Henry Griswald wrote the book, then the very slow and very deliberate pace of the story is very much in synch with how people tell their tales. Children may in fact blurt out what they have done and feel great remorse, but grown-ups who have held back and resisted telling the truth for seventy years, even to themselves, tell the story very delibrately with no need to hurry up and reach the end of the story. Henry is not stretching out the story or with holding details from us, he is slowy and painfully telling us what happened and what he did.

If you read this book as if Thomas Cook wrote the book, you will feel frutrated at times and want him to hurry up and tell the story instead of hiding behind the narrator's slow telling of the story. But if you read the book as if Henry Griswald did in fact write the book himself- that he is not just a device used by Thomas Cook - then you will be able to slow down and let Henry tell you the story at his own pace. It is a slow and in the end it becomes a painful story, but you won't need to try and hurry him up. You will come to see that he told the story the only way he could, after not telling it for 70 years, he could only tell it very slowly and very deliberately. And in the end, he finally tells it all, even the part he has never told anyone before. show less

An excellent read..The small town Chatham comes alive in Cook's beautiful writing,characters are so well flushed out that you feel for them...The suspense element is so well maintained,you are in anticipation of what happens next and in a language that can be described as poetic..