Different Class by Joanne Harris

514 pages

Rating 3.⭐s

You can buy Different Class...here

You can follow Joanne Harris...here

• The Blurb...

After thirty years at St Oswald's Grammar in North Yorkshire, Latin master Roy Straitley has seen all kinds of boys come and go - the clowns, the rebels, the underdogs, and those he calls his Brodie boys. But every so often there's a boy who doesn't fit the mould. A troublemaker. A boy capable of twisting everything around him. A boy with hidden shadows inside.

With insolvency and academic failure looming, a new broom has arrived at the venerable school, bringing Powerpoint, sharp suits and even sixth form girls to the dusty corridors. But while Straitley does his sardonic best to resist this march to the future, a shadow from his past is stirring. A boy who even twenty years on haunts his teacher's dreams. A boy capable of bad things.

• Our Review...

I read this book as part of the 52 books in 52 weeks challenge. For details click  here. The prompt for this weeks book was a revenge story.

Roy Straightly is an old latin master in a public school. For any readers outside the UK, a public school is actually a private, fee paying school.. I think they are called "public" (which they are definitely not) as part of a camouflage exercise to ensure outrage at their existence, and potential to be taxed is kept to a minimum. 

Anyway, I digress, back to the review  Roy is an archaic man in an archaic institution that is on the verge of collapsing into the abyss.. Onto this sinking ship is parachuted a pilot (I know, I'm mixing metaphors but what the heck!) in the form of crisis head John Harrington. He plans to modernise the school with paperless office, shiny new health and safety policies, customer focus and actually letting girls into the school. 

Roy is horrified and vows to fight the young upstart all the way, especially as Roy knows the new headmaster is a wrong 'un. The new head is a former pupil who, twenty years before, was part of a scandal that resulted in Roy's friend and fellow teacher, Harry Clarke jailed for sexual abuse of a minor and murder. So the battle lines are drawn.

The novel is written in alternating timelines 1980s and 2005. Both timelines are written in the first person. One viewpoint is from Roy's perspective the other is from a child only known as ziggy, who is writing to his diary. It's a clever method of getting in both protagonist and antagonists heads and follow their life experiences and to see why they are who they are. We are also drawn into the day to day running of the school and the characters of other masters and children. 

There is humour in the story but as befits the subject matter it is at times a dark book but never overly descriptive of the sexual abuse. The public school setting is a fairly unique one. You have power, privilege, money, innocence, depravity and to a large extent detachment from the real world. It is scary that these institutions produce our political leaders.

Roy is a sort of Mr Chips character who has devoted his life to the school for 30+ years. No wife or children, who never really felt attached to his now dead parents. He seems to me a strange a-sexual character. The story follows the increasing battle intensity between Roy and the head, while at the same time delving into the past history of the both of them. Could a clue from the past help Roy turn the tide?

It is an interesting novel in that it gives an insight into a world that I would never be part of. Some of the motivations seem a bit odd to me. One in particular, It seems to me that the scandal of sexual abuse and thus dragging the good name of the school through the mud is a a far greater crime than actually carrying out the abuse. The word "tolerated" keeps popping into mind. Which is food for thought. 

• Selected Quotes...

I don't believe God really cares what you eat, or what you wear, or whom you love. I think that if God made the stars, He must have a greater perspective.”

All schools have their skeletons. St Oswald’s is no exception. Most of the time, we try our best to keep them in the closet. But this time, the only recourse we have is to throw open all the closets, light as many bulbs as we can and catch the vermin as it comes out.

They change the sky, not their souls, that run across the ocean.

Progress through tradition

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• About The Author...

Joanne Harris (OBE, FRSL) is the internationally renowned and award-winning author of over twenty novels, plus novellas, cookbooks, scripts, short stories, libretti, lyrics, articles, and a self-help book for writers, TEN THINGS ABOUT WRITING. In 2000, her 1999 novel CHOCOLAT was adapted to the screen, starring Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp. She holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Sheffield and Huddersfield, is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Her hobbies are listed in Who's Who as 'mooching, lounging, strutting, strumming, priest-baiting and quiet subversion of the system'. She is active on social media, where she writes stories and gives writing tips as @joannechocolat; she posts writing seminars on YouTube; she performs in a live music and storytelling show with the #Storytime Band; and she works from a shed in her garden at her home in Yorkshire.

She also has a form of synaesthesia which enables her to smell colours. Red, she says, smells of chocolate..