{"id":861,"date":"2016-05-14T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-28T22:14:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=861"},"modified":"2025-01-01T15:21:42","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T02:21:42","slug":"different-class","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2016\/05\/14\/different-class\/","title":{"rendered":"Different Class"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Joanne Harris<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Double Day\/Penguin Random House<\/em><\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Otago Daily Times, May 14th 2016<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Although best known for her modern-day fairy tale Chocolat<\/em>,Joanne Harris\u2019s bibliography spans multiple forms, ranging from essays to a Nordic fantasy series, a Dr Who novella, and even a cookbook. It is, however, in the dark art of psychological thriller that she really excels and her latest novel, Different Class<\/em> is a masterful play of smoke and mirrors that will leave you guessing until the final page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

St Oswald\u2019s Grammar may have survived its annus horribilis <\/em>(detailed in the earlier novel, Gentlemen and Players) <\/em>but its ongoing existence as an educational lies in the hands of newly-appointed Super-Head who, armed with the new motto Progress Through Tradition <\/em>and two Crisis deputies, is tasked with resurrecting the venerable school\u2019s reputation and dragging it into the 21st<\/sup> Century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After three decades moulding boys into men through a combination of benign neglect, firm discipline, and a solid grounding in the first declension, Latin master Ron Straitley immediately realises that the \u2018through\u2019 in this catchphrase is meant incisively rather than inclusively and regards the proposed changes \u2013 computers, cultural sensitivity, co-educational classes \u2013 with\u00ad horror. What disturbs Strailey most, however, is the identity of the man who is driving them: former pupil and now Headmaster, Johnny Harrington. Although at St Oswald\u2019s for only a year, Harrington was himself at the heart of an earlier scandal that threatened to bring the school to its knees twenty-four years earlier, and Straitley is convinced that the man has returned to enact his final revenge. But his attempts to undermine and expose Harrington\u2019s true agenda threaten to reawaken the past, leaving him facing to personal demons that may undo him along with the school that he loves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Told in the first-person present, a technique that allows Harris to carefully control the flow of information  \u2013 and disinformation \u2013  available to the reader, the narrative shifts between 2005 and the Christmas term of 1981\/2. Straitley\u2019s voice alternates with a series of diary entries by an unidentified boy and addressed to a recipient called Mousey, who, it is soon made clear, is dead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many details are withheld or only obliquely alluded to, leaving ample space for imagination to provide additional details and assumptions. Not only does this make the reader an integral part of the story, it sets the stage for a series of revelations that, despite the cover\u2019s spoiler description of Different Class<\/em> as \u2018a masterpiece of misdirection\u2019, still come as a complete surprise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the real strength of the novel is not the plot, as clever as it is, but the picture it paints of the school, its pupils, and the Latin master for whom teaching and \u2018his boys\u2019 mean everything. There is an underlying honesty and affection in Harris\u2019s portrayal that reflects the fact that she herself spent many years as a teacher. I have not yet read Gentlemen and Players<\/em>, the details of which are merely hinted at here,<\/em> and Harris admits she is likely to revisit the school in the future. I look forward to continuing my own acquaintance the honourable Straitley and St Oswald\u2019s Grammar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/masterful-play-smoke-and-mirrors<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joanne Harris
\n
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