BOOK REVIEW

Lily King’s second novel is called THE ENGLISH TEACHER, and that’s what her main character, Vida Avery, is. And that’s about all Vida is; it’s her whole identity, what she’s built her life on. Fifteen years ago, Vida came to Fayer, an island off the coast of Maine, pregnant and with a terrible secret trailing her all the way from Texas. She got a job as an English teacher at the island’s prestigious private school, and she gave birth to a son, Peter. For fifteen years, mother and son live in isolation (isolated from each other, and isolated from the rest of the world), until one day, a man named Tom Belou, a widower with three children, enters their lives. He asks Vida to marry him–and although she wants to refuse, she says yes. Peter, for his part, couldn’t be happier about the marriage. For years, he’s been trying to understand his mother, to forge some kind of relationship with her, to be a family with her–and he believes that, with the addition of a father figure and three new siblings, he and his mother will finally become a real family.

But Peter hadn’t counted on the lingering presence of the former Mrs. Belou in their new home; her picture still graces the bathroom wall, her clothes are still in the basement, she lives on the lips of her three children. Still feeling isolated, Peter slips into daydreams of Mrs. Belou–of what it would have been like to have her for a mother, instead of his withdrawn, unstable one.

During the first month of her marriage, Vida begins teaching TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES to her sophomore English classes. She’s taught the book for fifteen years, but suddenly she’s seeing the parallels to her own life clearly. Vida, paralyzingly scared of living life, collapsing from within, retreats farther into a comforting bottle of bourbon; but rather than seeming farther away, her past seems to haunt her even more–and now Peter’s demanding to know the devastating truth about his father.

THE ENGLISH TEACHER is startling in its simplicity, yet astonishing in its depth. It’s an intense character study and a study of the complicated relationship between a mother and her son; it’s Peter’s coming-of-age story; it’s the story of Vida’s renewal. Both of King’s protagonists are brilliant creations, and she keeps her focus tightly on them throughout the novel. Peter is an endearing teenage boy, confused and sexualized and curious, trying desperately to fit in with his stepsiblings and his peers. Vida is angry, detached, and desperate, a woman who’s more attuned with the characters she reads about than her own life. Like the Iranians who are taken hostage on Vida’s wedding day in 1979, Vida is a hostage, trapped in her own life. Vida has her alcohol, and Peter has his dreams of Mrs. Belou; but the one thing they can’t escape from is each other.

The plot sounds very interesting, have you read this?

Source Amazon