Review: A NARROW DOOR, Joanne Harris

• 
  this edition published by Orion Books 2021
  
• ISBN 978-1-4091-7082-2
• 436 pages
• author website
• resources from the author 
  

Synopsis (publisher)

Now I'm in charge, the gates are my gates. The rules are my rules.

It's an incendiary moment for St Oswald's school. For the first time in its history, a headmistress is in power, the gates opening to girls.

Rebecca Buckfast has spilled blood to reach this position. Barely forty, she is just starting to reap the harvest of her ambition. As the new regime takes on the old guard, the ground shifts. And with it, the remains of a body are discovered.

But Rebecca is here to make her mark. She'll bury the past so deep it will evade even her own memory, just like she has done before. After all...

You can't keep a good woman down. 

My Take

From the author:
Like the two previous books, A NARROW DOOR is written as a dialogue between two first-person narrators; a kind of chess game between Roy Straitley (the White King) and in this case, Rebecca Price/Buckfast (The Black Queen). The adversarial structure remains, but in this case, the relationship between the two opponents is more cordial – for some part of the journey, at least, their interests are aligned.

This was a challenging read. If you look at the list below, you will see that it is some time since I read the previous book in the series, and I remember finding that a challenging read because of the distance between it and the previous title. My memory is not what it was...

However the structure of A NARROW DOOR, plus its length, also makes it a challenging read. There are a number of time frames - mainly 1971 when Rebecca Price was 5 years old and her brother Connor disappeared; 1989 when Rebecca becomes a Supply teacher at King Henry's Grammar School for Boys; 2006 when Rebecca becomes the principal of St. Oswald's Academy. Narratives alternate between time frames, and sometimes it is up to the reader to decide who the narrator is.

Events are seen mainly through the eyes of Rebecca and Roy Straitley who in 2006 has been a master at St Oswald's for 30 years. But neither of them are particularly reliable narrators. When her brother disappeared she saw things with a child's eyes, and did not always understand what was happening.

Rebecca has fought hard to get to where she is: the new Headmaster of St. Oswald's. She does not intend to stay for long - just long enough to bring girls into the mix, as well as uncover what happened to her older brother over 30 years earlier. Rebecca has her own impression of what happened to him, and who was responsible, but even so she has to change her interpretation of the events more than once, and the final conclusion comes even as a surprise to her.

My rating: 4.8

I've also read

4.5, blueeyedboy
4.6, DIFFERENT CLASS

From Fantastic Fiction

Malbry
   1. Blueeyedboy (2010)
   2. Gentlemen and Players (2005)
   3. Different Class (2016)
   4. A Narrow Door (2021)

Review: DIFFERENT CLASS, Joanne Harris

• Format: Kindle (Amazon)
• File Size: 2131 KB
• Print Length: 416 pages
• Publisher: Transworld Digital (April 21, 2016)
• Publication Date: April 21, 2016
• Sold by: PRH UK
• Language: English
• ASIN: B018X1L38A

Synopsis (Amazon)

After thirty years at St Oswald’s Grammar in North Yorkshire, Latin master Roy Straitley has seen all kinds of boys come and go. But every so often there’s a boy who doesn’t fit the mould. A troublemaker. A boy with hidden shadows inside.

A new broom has arrived, 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.

My Take

Although there are roughly 10 years between the publication dates of GENTLEMAN & PLAYERS (2005) and DIFFERENT CLASS (2016), in reality there is only a time lapse of about a year and it would probably pay to read the two in sequence so as to avoid forgetting some bits from the former that are important in the latter.

The theme is similar - Roy Straitley should be preparing for retirement - his main teaching subject Classics appears to be becoming obsolete and he is having to accept female students from a nearby college into his classes. The old Head has retired and a new broom comes in, intent to turn St. Oswald's into a popular and profitable concern. The new Head is an accountant, not teacher trained, and an old boy whom Straitley once taught. And he brings with him a history that Straitley vaguely remembers, events that occurred thirty years earlier, including murder.

I found it fascinating how the author has put her finger so accurately on what modern schooling is bringing to the forefront - the relevance of formerly popular curriculum, the way education systems are being run by accountants rather than educators. Teachers though are still coming from the perspective of personalising knowledge for their pupils and concerning themselves with developing young minds. Straitley is "old school", on the surface peddling knowledge that becoming less relevant to the modern world, but underneath it all still loyal to his students, with their best interests at heart.

And yet at the same time this is crime fiction with threads that weave through a period of 30 years.

Excellent reading.

My Rating: 4.6



I've also read
GENTLEMEN & PLAYERS, my rating 4.8
The new academic year is beginning at St. Oswald’s expensive and exclusive school for boys. Roy Straitley, Classics master, is fighting to survive in a world that sees French and German as more relevant than the Latin he has taught for the last 33 years. The new year brings with it new students and new teachers including one that has got the job on the basis of false credentials. This teacher is dedicated not to the advancement of education at St. Oswald’s, but to bringing St. Oswald’s down. Little things begin to go wrong, a boy nearly dies, Straitley has a heart scare a few weeks before his 65th birthday, and then the stage is set for major catastrophe. It seems very probable Roy will not achieve his “century” and that St. Oswald’s will not survive a series of crises. The plotting in this novel is intricate, the author is determined not to reveal who the pretender is, and then all climaxes on Roy’s birthday. And look out for the little hints: the chapter headings, the chess icons, and the clever play on words.

And Blue eyed boy (rated 4.5)

About the author

JOANNE HARRIS is one of our best loved and most versatile novelists. She first sprung on the scene with the bestselling Chocolat (made into an Oscar-nominated film with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp), which turned into the sensuous, magical Lansquenet trilogy (Lollipop Shoes, Peaches for Monsieur le Curé). She has since written acclaimed novels in diverse genres including historical fiction, fantasy based on Norse myth, and the Malbry cycle of psychological suspense (Gentlemen & Players, Blueeyedboy, and now, Different Class). She is an honorary Fellow of St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and was awarded an MBE by the Queen. Born in Barnsley, of a French mother and an English father, she spent fifteen years as a teacher before (somewhat reluctantly) becoming a full-time writer. She lives in Yorkshire with her family, plays bass in a band first formed when she was sixteen, works in a shed in her garden, likes musical theatre and old sci-fi, drinks rather too much caffeine, spends far too much time online and occasionally dreams of faking her own death and going to live in Hawaii. 

Review - blueeyedboy, Joanne Harris

Published by Doubleday 2010
ISBN 978-0-385-60951-7
410 pages

Blurb
Once there was a widow with three sons, and their names were Black, Brown, and Blue. Black was the eldest; moody and aggressive. Brown was the middle child; timid and dull. But Blue was his mother's favourite. And he was a murderer.

Joanne Harris says that in writing this novel she cultivated a secret online life.
Under a pseudonym, I made a number of online friends, wrote a great deal of fanfic, and began to take an increasing interest in the way people interact online, the communities they create and join, and the way they choose to portray themselves.

The reader "constructs" Blue through his blog posts and the way he interacts with friends online. This is how we learn about his brothers, his mother, and his life history.  Blue and his friends play mind games, and it becomes difficult for the reader to tell fact from fiction. Nobody in this psychological thriller is quite what they seem and there is really no straightforward narration either, in fact it is hard to tell whether the narrator of the moment is reliable or not. The novel seems to have a structure, but in the long run even that is a bit of an illusion. It feels a bit like a snaggled skein of wool. At the end your mind will feel exercised as you attempt to impose some order on what you are told.

blueeyedboy is not a quick read. But it is not just the length. If you are like me, you'll find yourself re-reading bits just to make sure you got that quite right. Harris herself likens the novel to a Chinese puzzle box. So take it slowly and patiently. Murder did happen, but whose was it? There are plenty of deaths. Murders are plotted. Lives are destroyed.

My rating: 4.5

Joanne Harris talks about blueeyedboy.

Review on Euro Crime by Michelle Peckham.

mini-reviews of other novels by Joanne Harris

CHOCOLAT (Audio CD), my rating    4.5
Vianne Rocher, with her small daughter Anouk, arrives at a small French village on a festival day leading up to Christmas. She decides to stay and sets up a chocolaterie in the square directly opposite the church. As Lent approaches the village priest identifies her as a corrupting influence, confirmed in his mind when Vianne decides to have an Easter Chocolate Festival. Is this a mystery book? - some would say not - but there is plenty of mystery, even an old case of murder - and who is the old priest in a coma whom Father Reynaud visits on such a regular basis? Is Vianne herself who she thinks she is? Beautifully read by Juliet stevenson - a BBC Audiobook on 8 CDs.

GENTLEMEN & PLAYERS, my rating 4.8
The new academic year is beginning at St. Oswald’s expensive and exclusive school for boys. Roy Straitley, Classics master, is fighting to survive in a world that sees French and German as more relevant than the Latin he has taught for the last 33 years. The new year brings with it new students and new teachers including one that has got the job on the basis of false credentials. This teacher is dedicated not to the advancement of education at St. Oswald’s, but to bringing St. Oswald’s down. Little things begin to go wrong, a boy nearly dies, Straitley has a heart scare a few weeks before his 65th birthday, and then the stage is set for major catastrophe. It seems very probable Roy will not achieve his “century” and that St. Oswald’s will not survive a series of crises. The plotting in this novel is intricate, the author is determined not to reveal who the pretender is, and then all climaxes on Roy’s birthday. And look out for the little hints: the chapter headings, the chess icons, and the clever play on words.