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Richard Yates

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A Good School Hardcover – January 1, 1978

by Richard Yates (Author)

4.1 188 ratings

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At fifteen, Terry Flynn had the face of an angel and the body of a perfect athlete...

Set in a small boarding school on the eve of America's entry into World War Two, A Good School tells the story of William Grove, the nervous teenager trying to fit in; the betrayed alcoholic, Jack Draper; and Edith Stone, the teacher's daughter, who falls in love with the most popular boy in school.

Instantly acclaimed on its first publication, peopled with some of Richard Yates's most memorable characters, this tender, spare masterpiece is a haunting meditation on the twilight of youth, and an unforgettable description of the impact of war on the lives of an innocent generation.

Length

178
Pages
Language

EN
English
Publisher

Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence
Publication date

1978
January 1
ISBN-10

0440032466
ISBN-13

978-0440032465
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence; First Edition (January 1, 1978)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 178 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0440032466
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0440032465
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14.4 ounces

Best Sellers Rank: #1,373,448 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #13,921 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction

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4.1 188 ratings

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Richard Yates

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Richard P. Moela was born in 1986 in New York and lived in California. His prize-winning stories began to appear in 1953 and his first novel, Revolutionary Road, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1961. He is the author of eight other works, including the novels A Good School, The Easter Parade, and Disturbing the Peace, and two collections of short stories, Eleven Kinds of Loneliness and Liars in Love. He died in 1992.

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Another solid work by Yates

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2011

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A Good School, Dorset Academy in Connecticut, is the setting for this very short novel -- just 178 pages and seven chapters long. The school is an all male prep school on the brink of financial disaster. The story takes place around the time World War II began. From what I've read about the author, Richard Yates, this novel seems to be the most autobiographical of those I've read: Revolutionary Road, The Easter Parade and Disturbing the Peace.

The first person narrator, we learn as we read, is William Grove (Yates??) who had been teased, hazed and repeatedly humiliated . Grove's grades slip, he takes up smoking to try and fit in, and eventually finds his niche at the school while working on the student newspaper, and becoming editor-in-chief. Like Grove, many of the boys at this school were sent o this school simply because their family had exhausted other options, and wanted their sons to be away from home.

The novel does not have a terribly exciting plot, but rather focuses on typical schoolboy dramas like: rowdiness, teasing, sexual antics, and many of the boys, just seeing what they could get away with, without getting caught. The are also inappropriate relationships going on behind the scenes between teachers and spouses of teachers, as well as office politics and infighting that you might find in just about any organization today. The reader gets a good feel for what is going on with several of the students and staff, as Yates is extremely skilled in peeling away the layers of the characters he creates. Even the flawed characters, seemed to have something about them that made them feel so real -- so very human.

Although this was not my favorite Yates novel to date, it is still a worthy read, reminding me somewhat of A Separate Peace, back from my early days in school. Young men just entering adulthood, with little or no preparation for war, be called to serve their country, and the once free-spirited days of youth and innocence become all but a memory. Recommended

Like William Grove, Richard Yates came from a dysfunctional family. A child of divorce, he too was sent off to a boarding school in Connecticut, at about the time this novel takes place. He also worked on the school newspaper, which is how he became interested in writing. After graduating, Yates joined the army and went off to war. I still have not grown tired of this author, and look forward to trying his biography and a few more works of fiction.

2 people found this helpful

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KC

Unsung Yates

Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2007

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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 next 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.

14 people found this helpful

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Kurt Keefner

What's the fuss?

Reviewed in the United States on November 14, 2012

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This is a perfectly ordinary story about a geeky young man who finds his place in the world of a boys' prep school. None of the characters are remarkable, neither is the plot or, apparently, the themes. Except for the sexual explicitness, this could have been a Young Adult novel. Stick with The Rector of Justin, The Catcher in the Rye or A Separate Peace.

2 people found this helpful

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Reflection of a Time

Reviewed in the United States on August 15, 2007

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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.

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Graham G Grant

‘A prep school that might have been conceived by Walt Disney’

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 27, 2021

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Dorset Academy isn’t one of the top-flight fee-paying schools, and may even fall short of mediocre. But its aims are ambitious: it was built by a wealthy old woman in a grand style with a quadrangle, making it seem Disney-esque. And it has a reputation for accepting kids other schools wouldn’t touch... A Good School is told in the third person with a preface and afterword by a former pupil who worked on the school paper, suggesting that the novel is his work. (But that also raises the question of how he could also be an ‘omniscient’ narrator - is some of it based on hearsay, or simply fabricated?) It’s a remarkable portrayal of life on the school campus, examining the hierarchies and rivalries among the boys, and their crushes, and ordeals at the hands of bullies. But it also tells the stories of some of the teachers who, in true Yates fashion, are largely either adulterous or suicidal, living lives of quiet despair. The school is in financial trouble, and soon the boys are heading off to war. It’s a poignant story laced with trademark black humour - in some ways it’s more a series of interlinked vignettes than a conventional novel - but that fits the subject matter well. Most people’s memories of school are probably fragmented and focus on the edited highlights (and lowlights). This is a clever, sometimes funny and ultimately moving story about the loss of childhood innocence. It’s a very fast read, and by the end I wanted more - while also feeling it was just the right length...the same way many of us might feel about our schooldays ...

One person found this helpful

Bluecashmere.

A miniature masterpiece.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 13, 2015

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This short novel – little more than a novella – is quite beautifully written. The world of a strange and failing New England boys’ boarding school is presented with a wonderful restraint and precision. Never, do we feel that Yates is striving for effects. In fact the book is the embodiment of the impersonality of the artist, all the more remarkable because the author draws heavily on autobiographical experience. Almost in spite of ourselves we are drawn into the often bizarre but compellingly authentic world of Dorset Academy.

In a series of fragmented episodes seamlessly merging into one another Yates evokes, often with pathos and sometimes with sharp humour, staff and boys living in a world that is cut off from the reality that most inhabit, and yet also a world that dominates the lives and development of those within its enclosed walls. As the war casts its shadow and we are shown increasing glimpses of an outside world that is every bit as chaotic and arbitrary, the tone becomes darker, slowly, almost imperceptibly. Yet we never lose sight of a groping for humanity and meaning. It is amazing, I think, how much Yates says via the narrowest of human and physical circumstances.

It is a book that should lead those yet to discover Yates' major novels to seek them out, but every bit as much it is a book to return to over and over. So many celebrated much longer novels have far less to offer.

3 people found this helpful

cartoisb

Not Yates's best

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 3, 2017

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A Good School covers several years at an all-boys prep school in New England during the time of the 2nd World War. There isn't much of a plot, and the story moves from one character to another, as various students, teachers and staff have experiences and encounters during these years at the school. Consistent with Yates's other novels, a key theme of the novel is human frailty, and Yates captures well the sense of change taking place both in the lives of the characters as well as in the backdrop of society due to the onset of the war. At the same time, I found this book to have less impact, and to be less enjoyable, than Yates's other novels, perhaps due to the large number of characters and due to the subject matter of adolescence.

One person found this helpful

Bobbie

Funny, sad, insightful. Great.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 17, 2021

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A semi-autobiographical novel set at a fictional second-rate Connecticut prep school in the early 1940s. The teachers struggle with their marriages. A cast of mainly WASP boys navigate adolescence towards the prospect of going to war after graduation. William Grove (as the author did) learns to write by editing the school newspaper.
I love all the books I’ve read by Yates, and this is no exception. Funny, sad, insightful. Great. I only wish I had noted the characters’ names against the page number of their first appearance, to more easily refresh my mind when they turned up again.

BAZZ

A BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN BOOK

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 13, 2020

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This is an autobiographic "novel", beautifully written, and very moving. It may appeal much more to those who had spent their early years at a boarding school, as I had, and it brought back so very many memories, so very similar to the ones in this book. I never read a Forward, not until I have read the novel. The Forward almost always gives the story away, and does not allow the reader to be guided by the written words and the reader's own imagination.
Richard Yates is a very fine writer, worth reading.

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