Schooling - (Vintage Contemporaries) by Heather McGowan (Paperback)

About the Book

"Schooling" is a portrait of 13-year-old Catrine Evans, who, following her mother's death, is uprooted from her home in America to an English boarding school. There she encounters unruly classmates and the sympathetic teacher Mr. Gilbert, who offers Catrine the friendship she so desperately wants--a friendship that gradually takes on sinister and obsessive overtones.

Book Synopsis

Heather McGowan's widely praised first novel introduces a literary artist of consummate skill, and a narrative voice of astonishing sensitivity and sensuousness. Tracking every mercurial shift of her character's consciousness, the result is dreamy, disquieting, and achingly alive.

Schooling is a portrait of an adolescent girl, thirteen-year-old Catrine Evans, who following her mother's death is uprooted from her home in America to an English boarding school. There she encounters classmates who sniff glue and engage in arson and instructors who make merciless fun of her accent. She also finds the sympathetic chemistry teacher Mr. Gilbert, who offers Catrine the friendship she so desperately wants-a friendship that gradually takes on sinister and obsessive overtones.

Review Quotes

"Stunningly beautiful, earnest and aching and astonishing and sad.... The most haunting novel of the year."-Detroit Free Press

"Mesmerizing.... Does a dazzling job of conveying the hormonal impatience and doomy romanticism of adolescence."-The New York Times

"A thrilling, crystalline novel of adolescent consciousness, a brilliantly unflinching marriage of lyricism and erudition, a book which, like the best books, contains a whole, urgent, and unforgettable world." --Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn

About the Author

Heather McGowan lives Providence, Rhode Island.