The Chatham School Affair (1997) - Plot & Excerpts
One from the "dark secret shrouded in the mists of time" department. As a reader, I like framing devices as much as anybody, but they need to have some kind of rules; a modern story can't continually roam around in clouds of fear and suspicion like The Castle Of Otranto or The Mysteries Of Udolfo. It can be done in our day, but just not as the barrage of verbiage it was in yesteryear. The author takes his time (and ours) building the world of this novel, framed within multiple removes and perspectives. We are basically two thirds into this when forward motion begins to overtake the restraints pulling it back into the past. I understand, I think, that there is some attraction to the slowly developing narrative, the techniques that were so unnervingly effective way back closer to the time of the birth of the novel itself: the plaintive diary-entry, the oil-painting in the main hall with secrets hiding in plain sight, the hidden clue in the locket or suicide note. But Cook's story is so weighted with premonitions, visions and re-imaginings, each crafted so as to dissolve back to the present day ... that it becomes a little ridiculous. "I came into her room with a reluctance and sense of intrusion that I still can't entirely explain, unless, from time to time, we are touched by the opposite of aftermath, feel not the swirling eddies of a retreating wave, but the dark pull of an approaching one. Cook's prose is a pleasure, and flows nicely until you stop to question it. The flash-forwarding and revisiting are no doubt meant to instill a floating, dreamy storyline, but are very often just annoying. Even 'dreamy' needs some kind of pace, a pulse; gently drifting timelessness becomes more or less interminable. Frames around frames are no justification for lukewarm momentum. This novel nearly redeems itself in the very end, with a vexing Conradian ethical convolution, almost allowing the reader to get the sense that all the drifty-dreamy was building to something the only way it knew how... But a last stab, on the last page, at a Joycean elegiac paragraph (ala The Dead) to sum up ... blows the reconsideration.
First of all, this book was mistitled. It should have been called The Chatham School Tease, because the author teases the reader every few pages with his ham-handed foreshadowing. How about a little foreshadowing at the beginning and then just telling your story, hmm? Instead Cook spends way too much time with his mopey old narrator who as a young boy had some part in the Affair. I'll tell you about that again in a few pages.Secondly, all of the characters are undermotivated. It is not credible that X would commit murder. It is not credible that Y would commit suicide. The narrator/young boy does something that such a young man would never do, never. I kind of liked Miss Channing, the art teacher put on trial (what the charges are Cook coyly does not reveal until 3/4 of the way through), but she was pretty standard example of the sophisticated and cosmopolitan art teacher type. The relationship between the headmaster and his wife was good. Look, I'm not saying I wasn't drawn in. It's just that I feel cheated. Here's how low Cook stoops: there is actually one character who goes by two completely different names and whose identity Cook does not reveal until the last 5 pages. This isn't a book--it's an author playing games with the reader.If you want something good in a prep school setting, re-read A Separate Peace. If you want something really good, with creepiness and a seductive professor and insight into evil, read The Secret History. I will not be trying another book by hook or by Cook, and the Edgar imprimatur means nothing to me now.
What do You think about The Chatham School Affair (1997)?
This book won an Edgar? What am I missing? I have a vision of an author trying to make something out of nothing by adopting a creaky writing device of foreshadowing. All it did for me was make me wish he would get on with the story, for goodness sake, so I could finally finish the foolish thing and start something more interesting. Maybe the Edgar committee was sorry for Mr. Cook because he had come up short in previous years, and threw him this bone. Or maybe the Edgar isn't that reliable as a quality measuring device. Whatever the reason, this book is a real drag. Skip it.
—Al
Henry Griswald narrates the events that make up The Chatham School Affair, beginning with the arrival of Miss Elizabeth Channing, hired as a favor to a family friend to be the new art teacher at the all boys' school. The way Henry's tale unfolds reminds me of Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca or perhaps My Cousin Rachel.Something horrible happened that intimately involved young Henry, Miss Channing and lead to her death and the closure of the school. Over the course of the book through flashbacks, court transcripts and conversations with townsfolk who remember the events but wish they didn't, Cook builds a suspenseful story in a wonderfully gothic setting.The first couple chapters are so densely packed with important information that I had to reread them a couple of times before I felt comfortable moving on to the rest of the novel. Starting with chapter three, the novel picks up pace and I found myself making time to read the book to finish it as quickly as I could.
—Sarah Sammis
Elizabeth Channing arrives at Chatham, Massachusetts to be the new art teacher at the Chatham School.Arthur Griswold, headmaster, meets her at the station. He's accompanied by his son, Henry, the narrator of the story. He will be a sophomore when the school season begins.Channing is a romantic and Henry quickly develops a puppy love for her.A domestic at the Griswold house, Sarah Doyle, asks Channing to teach her to read and Sarah and Henry are often at Channing's cottage together working on their studies.Leland Reed arrives at Chatham to be the new poetry teacher. He's accompanied by his wife and child. He and Elizabeth are drawn together as the story moves back and forth through time from the peaceful start of the story to a trial involving some of the characters.The reader isn't sure what crime was committed but there are parallels to Dreiser's "An American Tragedy."Winner of the Edgar Award, this is a story that tugs at the reader's heart as the central characters seem drawn to a tragedy that doesn't seem to be able to be averted.
—Michael
