Boys’ boarding school stories make up an entire genre and have longtime devotees, but as in, say, the work of pg wodehouse, the setting of these books is largely consequence-free. no matter what, the slate can usually be cleaned last for the next caper.
Indeed, they are places fraught with consequence, and the adult stories set within their walls, such as Lindsay Anderson’s masterful 1968 film If…, maintain an abiding fascination with their microcosmic studies of oppression and inequality. rebellion.
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My new novel, English Monsters, is about a group of friends who meet at boarding school at the age of 10, and whose experiences inescapably impact their lives for the next 30 years. so no jennings, bunter or malory towers here. hogwarts is also out. everyone at boarding school craves superpowers, because it’s the most obvious answer to powerlessness. but you don’t have them.
1. the time of the hero of mario vargas llosathe original Spanish title of the novel translates as the city and the dogs, the “dogs” being cadets in A Vicious Army School in Lima, Peru, based on the Leoncio Prado Military Academy to which Vargas Llosa was sent at age 14. the plot revolves around the theft of an exam and the subsequent death of the boy who ratted out the perpetrators. Leoncio Prado’s officials were so outraged by his portrayal in the novel that they held a book-burning ceremony, proving that Britain does not have a monopoly on associating residential education with deranged nationalist fervour.
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2. never let me go by kazuo ishiguroone of ishiguro’s great gifts is taking a very specific context, fraught with limitations, and extracting from it a voice and story that becomes powerfully universal. here, the backdrop is hailsham, a boarding school in the english countryside, where, it emerges, the students are clones created for the purpose of having their organs harvested. As the novel progresses, its superficial calm and simplicity is increasingly contrasted by a growing and devastating sense of loss as the novel becomes a meditation on life’s compromises and wasted opportunities.
3. frost in may by antonia whitenanda gray is sent to the convent of the five wounds at the behest of her beloved father, a recent convert to catholicism. girls as young as 11 are told here that they must “live constantly in the spirit presence of death”, so they “mortify” themselves by putting salt in their pudding instead of sugar and putting burrs on the inside of their uniforms . Even when Nanda’s behavior is exemplary, she is still admonished for lacking “normal, healthy, natural evil.” it’s a booby-trapped environment of exemptions and permits, where you can burn in hell forever just for eating a candy found on your way to communion.
4. Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh Sent from Scone College, Oxford for indecent behavior after his trousers are stolen by a drunken member of the Bollinger Club, Paul Pennyfeather is exiled to teach at a purgatory boarding school in Wales. on sports day, the fences are burned like firewood and replaced with five-foot-high spiked railings, and the starting gun is philbrick, the butler’s service revolver, which ends up being discharged into the heel of the son of the lady girth, lord tangent. among its many delights is the novel’s acknowledgment of the fact that boarding school teachers often seem as perplexed as the students about how they got to such a place.
5. Tobias Wolff’s Old School The novel opens in November 1960 after John F Kennedy has defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency of the United States. the boys at the elite school where this novel takes place favor jfk, partly because “he had his clothes under control” and “his wife was a bitch”, but mainly because he “read and wrote books”. The highlight of each quarter is a visiting great writer, and in our unnamed protagonist’s final year, the visiting writers are Robert Frost, Ayn Rand, and Ernest Hemingway, the latter of whom will judge a creative writing contest. this sends the students into a competitive frenzy and tests the school’s honor codes to the breaking point.
6. The Ruined Boys by Roy Fullergerald Bracher arrives at the South African boarding school after his parents’ divorce. he is desperate to conform and guilt-ridden over his own perceived role in separating from him, adoringly joining the director as a replacement father figure. The novel recounts Gerald’s transformation from enthusiastic admirer to cynical rebel as the shortcomings of the school (and, by extension, society) become apparent. The novel is insightful and funny about the philosophy of the boarding school, as in the scene where Gerald is nervous about the fact that a boxing match is going to take place and declares his fear that people might be killed. “Possibly,” replies his interlocutor. “but they will be killed in a fair way.”
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7. skippy dies by paul murray the title is not a spoiler: daniel “skippy” juster dies in the first pages of this novel, in the middle of a donut-eating race against his friend ruprecht van doren. Skippy’s final act is popping a donut in her fist and painting the words Tell Lori on the floor with jam. This is the starting point for a wild and rambling tale, both comic and tragic, recounting Ruprecht and Skippy’s experiences at Dublin’s Seabrook College for Boys.
8. prep by curtis sittenfeld at age 14, lee fiora becomes fascinated with boarding schools while researching the subject at her local public library. She falls in love with the hot guys in the prospects she sends and ends up, to the bewilderment of her parents, with a scholarship to the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. The atmosphere here is as elegant as it gets: the characters have names like Cross Sugarman and Gates Medkowski, but the novel’s stew of adolescent fears and desires is universal.
9. The Complete Molesworth by Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle I’m not breaking my own rule because the four books collected here are absolutely written for adults, though they may appeal to children as well. They document the exploits and philosophy of Nigel Molesworth, “The Curse of St Custards,” his “Grate Frend” Peason, the “Totally Wet” Fotherington-Tomas, and a host of other perfectly observed students and teachers. Many of the jokes can be enjoyed by people of any age, but to adult readers, the books also read like cutting social satire on 1950s England.
10. such, such were the joys of george orwell strictly speaking, this is an essay rather than a book, but it is published as a stand-alone pamphlet and its piercing-eyed orwellian conciseness makes it worth the effort. pity more than many more extensive tomes on the subject. It describes Orwell’s experiences as a pupil at St Cyprian’s in Sussex before and during the First World War, and was not published until two years after his death due to his arson attack on the school, the headmaster “Sambo” and his wife “Flip ”.
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jonathan cape publishes monsters in english by james scudamore.
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