The English Teacher

Dear Reader-

It's week two of November-Lily King Month. This week, I'm reviewing Ms. King's second book, The English Teacher. Hope you get a chance to read and enjoy this one!

Abby

Genre: Fiction

This is the story of Vida Avery, an English teacher at the exclusive Fayer Academy (the building of which was once owned by her grandfather) and a mother to a teenaged boy, Peter. Vida arrived at Fayer many years ago, a young and single mother, and has raised Peter on her own, living in a small cottage on the grounds of the school. This year, however, Vida is getting married. She and Tom are engaged, and get married soon after. Peter is excited and intrigued by the prospect of having a family. But, this hard-worked-for charade is cracking and cannot last. See, Vida has a secret and that secret will upend hers and Peter’s lives. Can they learn to find a new normal even while knowing what they know? This is a story of perseverance and learning to keep going for the people we love, even when we just want it all to stop.

In all of her books, King is an exquisite writer. This one too, holds amazing writing moments, but it’s different in that, the writing is intended to make you feel Vida’s extreme pain and loneliness. So, it’s heavy. We find out why Vida is withdrawn from the world in general, but in particular from Peter, relatively early on, and from there, it’s an easy guess as to what really happened to her. King isn’t building a mystery, but rather, wants the reader to really, really, know and feel Vida’s pain and sadness, and so we follow her through the storyline really being sunk by her grief and loneliness. So just be ready for it when you read this. But, as I said, there are so many moments of beautiful writing, where I had to go back and reread the sentence over and over again, that I, for one, was willing to go along for the ride. Like this one (this is a moment towards the end of the book where Vida and Peter hug), “She was terrified he’d take his arms away. Stay stay stay. He was the only skin she had. Everything else was gone. Stay.” I can feel her desperation of wanting to hold on to her son and really want to keep reading to know what comes next. I hope you give this one a try as it will stay with you.