Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9780413775207
Format: Import
ISBN number: 0413775208
Label: Methuen Publishing Ltd
Manufacturer: Methuen Publishing Ltd
Page Count: 226
Printing Date: September 07, 2006
Publishing house: Methuen Publishing Ltd
Studio: Methuen Publishing Ltd
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Rated by buyers 
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The story told here is a first-person-narrated acccount of a grown man's memories of his school days at a not-so-good or great private boys' school in Connecticut, the tuition for which was paid for by his divorced Dad who sacrificed to afford it. It is an episodic tale, covering three special and historical years, that ends in 1944 (midway between World War II), and a tale that garners the narrator, in the end, hard-won experience as a writer for the school newspaper, transient friendships, and, finally, a deep admiration for his now deceased old Dad.
A lot of what happens in the tale are the typical and gross deeds and misdeeds of teenage boys thrown together in one setting, but Richard Yates also tells tales about the adults, too, who are part of the private school life, whether they be teachers or janitors, adults who are learning about life and love, too, like the teenagers, though perhaps on a less-than-naive adventure.
The only drawback to the novel is that the first-person point of view can have no realistic way of being inside the bedrooms of the teachers to know what was said or what transpired - let alone inside each and every teenage boy's room within the dormitories or within the characters' thoughts. It strained credulity, for example, to be told what La Prade, the French teacher, was saying to Alice, his adultress, in his bedroom or in the last letter he ever wrote her, when the narrator himself is still a student and working overtime to write the school newspaper. A third-person or omniscient point-of-view would have handled this information better and not have made this knowledge realistically impossible.
I don't recommend the Picador issue of this paperback novel. The typeface was faded on many pages throughout the text, so that in no time at all, the pages will be unreadable, and even on some pages the words were "squiggly." The print job for this novel looks as if it came from cheap, generic photocopy galleys and published "as-is" without looking back at the result.
Rated by buyers 
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This rites of passage tale set in a failing prep school is so subtly written that its 160 pages engage and engross you so fully with its interwoven threads that it is as satisfying as an epic.
Yates inspires a genuine feeling for all the characters from the awkward Grove through to Teacher Driscoll, and even Mrs Hoopers 'cameo' appearence in the book isn't wasted and plays wonderfully.
In short, this is a very good book.
Rated by buyers -
Richard Yates is simply a master of fiction. Although not as good as "Revolutionary Road" or his short stories, both of which are about as good as it gets, he still manages to take a microscope to the lives and interactions of many students and teachers at Dorset Academy, a small all-boys academy. Yates somehow manages to juggle dozens of characters and how they interact with one another in this small place, all with a war and a draft going on in a background. The book reads like "The Spoon River Anthology" with all of these characters flashing in and out, all the while Yates does a wonderful job of ensuring all of the voices are different. From the outcasts to the class president, each character is shown clearly and you never have what has been a common occurrence with fiction yesterday that juggles multiple characters - that of all of the voices sounding exactly the same. I think what ultimately makes this novel successful is how vulnerable Yates is able to depict everyone. I loved this book and think this writer should forever remain in discussions of the best writers of the twentieth century.
Rated by buyers -
Richard Yates' "A Good School" is a good book. It takes you through the last days of a declining prep school in the Northeast during World War II. It is less a book about one person than about the chorus of people who make up the community -- from the Coach to the French teacher to the foreign student to the daughter of the Headmaster to the regular students themselves.
I went to a prep school. There's a lot to remind me of that time -- the oddity of being alone in a place that spends so much emphasis on rigid rituals, at a time in life when you need personal attention.
I suppose it reminds me a lot of "Seasoned Timber," another novel about private schools in New England.
It is not just the subject but really the approach. Yates has a way of spending a lot of time telling you what is happening. Some people prefer a writer who shows you things. The benefit is that as a reader you don't miss out on any of the underlying psychological weight among the characters. The cost is that you're one step removed from experiencing the story.
Rated by buyers -
The late Richard Yates seems to have fallen through the cracks of 20th-century literature, but if you haven't read him, you owe yourself a look. REVOLUTIONARY ROAD is considered his masterpiece, but A GOOD SCHOOL is an accessible introduction to his oeuvre as well, especially if you are a fan of prep school books in the tradition of A SEPARATE PEACE and THE CATCHER IN THE RYE.
That said, readers should know that Yates' book is much more graphic than either Knowles' or Salinger's. No, it's not over-the-top or anything like that (being written in 1978), but it does have its "boys-will-be-disgusting-boys" moments, with the protagonist, William Grove, being one of the victims early in its pages.
The book is set in northern Connecticut -- a typical prep school milieu -- only it's the war years (1941-44) and this school is for boys that most prestigious private schools won't touch. Grove, of course, is perceived as a loser by the other boys and has to make a name for himself as he best can. Meanwhile, Yates treats us to a wide array of characters, from the teachers to the boys to a certain teacher's daughter, and somehow holds it together. We are treated to the usual issues of young love and lust -- as well as to the equally-usual issues of middle-aged love and lust. We also watch Groves as he finds a calling on the school newspaper while trying to fit in with the other boys.
Yates has a straight-forward style and understands the subtleties of the heart. He shows how desperate these boys are for friendship and recognition in the tumultuous "pecking order" of everyday life, and how awkward some of these pleas for friendship become. It's the little things that add up in this book, such as when we watch Groves and other boys trying to be casual as they ask another boy to room with them subsequent year and when we see how crushed and hurt they are by rejection. More than once, he notes how similar the boys' desire for male friendship and acceptance comes to their longing for a girl and love. He is in that strange and sometimes dark terrain we know as the human heart.
I heartily recommend adding Yates to your reading résumé. This "good" school is tuition-free (for you) and will definitely pay off, hopefully leading you to other works by this fine writer.
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