The English Teacher wishes you a prosperous 2009! As tradition wants it, something new. I am glad to announce my makeover, after weeks of switching and swapping templates, here we finally have the end result.

A special thanks to Kay for making all this happen and for putting up with me LOL to all my readers old and new…Have a Happy New Year!

Today we are going to have some German lessons, not by me though but by my colleague, friend and business partner Kirsten it also happens to be her birthday too, Happy Birthday Kirsten! As you can see on the right-hand side bar I have a partner site www.deutschhappen.com

There are infact three of us in this joint venture, so I have to mention the man of the moment Kay
our so called “slave” he deals with all the technical issues and puts up with my pathetic questions eg “how do you do that” or “can you help me” LOL some of my dedicated followers have seen some changes here at The English Teacher and there will be other changes in the near future as my site will be hosted by myself as is my latest born Personal ESL Trainer the reason for the move is that my actual host Edublogs has somewhat deluded me, after me ranting and raving about it, never mind…Watch this space!

Source www.deutschhappen.com

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

This novel, dedicated to Narayan’s wife Rajam it’s not only autobiographical but also poignant in its intensity of feeling. The story is a series of experiences in the life of Krishna, an English teacher, and his quest towards achieving inner peace and self-development.

Plot summary

As an English teacher at Albert Mission College, Krishna has led a mundane and monotonous lifestyle comparable to that of a cow, but this took a turn when his wife, Susila, and their child, Leela, come to live with him. With their welfare on his hands, Krishna learns to be a proper husband and learns how to accept the responsibility of taking care of his family. He felt that his life had comparatively improved, as he understood that there’s more meaning to life than to just teaching in the college. However, on the day when they went in search of a new house, Susila contracts typhoid after visiting a dirty lavatory, keeping her in bed for weeks. Throughout the entire course of her illness, Krishna constantly tries to keep an optimistic view about Susila’s illness, keeping his hopes up by thinking that her illness would soon be cured. However, Susila eventually succumbs and passes away. Krishna, destroyed by his loss, had suicidal thoughts but gave them up for the sake of his daughter, Leela. He led his life as a lost and miserable person after her death, but after he received a letter from a stranger who indicated that Susila has been in contact with him and that she wanted to communicate with Krishna, he became more collected and cheerful. This leads to Krishna’s journey in search of enlightenment, with the stranger acting as a medium to Susila in the spiritual world. Leela, on the other hand, goes to a preschool where Krishna gets to meet the Headmaster, a profound man who cared for the students in his school and teaches them moral values through his own methods. The Headmaster puts his students as his top priority but he doesn’t care for his own family and children, eventually leaving them on the day predicted by an astrologer as to be when he was going to die, which did not come true. Krishna gets to learn through the Headmaster on the journey to enlightenment; eventually learning to communicate to Susila on his own, thus concluding the entire story itself, with the quote that he felt ‘a moment of rare immutable joy’.

Source Wikipedia

…and if you’ve come this far thanks for taking interest…