Gentlemen and Players - Joanne Harris
by Zia ~ September 11th, 2006. Filed under: Books.
I always thought Harris’ Chocolat (and the subsequent knock-off foodie-empowered-woman novel) was the diet version of Like Water for Chocolate: readable, but a little too saccharine. Harris has now turned toward the psychological thriller, and again, it’s readable, but falls short. I get the feeling she really wants to be Ruth Rendell.
Gentlemen and Players centers around the prestigious St. Oswald’s boarding school and a mysterious character whose history as the groundkeeper’s child makes him/her hate the place. This person becomes a teacher for the sole purpose of infiltrating the hallowed grounds and destroying the place–which seems like a really farfetched premise.
The novel was brisk and moved right along — and certain characters were beautifully realized–but ultimately the ending was less of a surprise than it should have been, and I had a hard time believing that anyone could hold a grudge for so long. Harris, too, seems to have that difficulty; she awkwardly inserts the idea that our strange character might possibly have psychopathological tendencies towards the end of the book (i.e., has a shrink) … but at that point, it was far too late.