The Chatham School Affair

Seven decades later, old Henry Griswald looks back on the defining experience of his life - the tragedy known to the people of his town as the Chatham School Affair. A young woman and a married man, teachers at the school of which his father was principal, had fallen in love. It was an era in which a woman could be sent to prison for the crime of adultery, and the beautiful Miss Channing, strong willed, cultivated and empathetic, did not easily fit in to a town and a school where conventions are not lightly flouted. The teenaged Henry Griswald, chafing with adolescent angst against what he perceives to be the repressiveness of his life and the society in which he lives, projects his own romantic longings on the doomed couple. What results is a tragedy of errors in which revenge, madness and murder are the inevitable result. The point of this novel is not the plot, which is simple and I would venture to say deliberately predictable, but the gradual revelation of character in the main actors in the drama. An impressive performance that richly deserves the Edgar for Best Novel.

One cannot be prepared for one's first Thomas H Cook book. It is a unique, disturbing, and edifying experience. Told in the first person by "Henry," who looks back on tragic events of long ago, the story moves slowly, agonizingly, with gathering shadows and dark portents. There are certain stories - books and movies - that seem to define the reader/viewer. I have, for instance, asked many people what the movie "Midnight Cowboy" was about and I have never had anywhere near the same definition twice. This book is like that. It plumbs the minds, spirits, and emotions of its characters, evokes tingling suspense, and fulfills its haunting promise with an ending that you will never forget. Not for "action" readers, but so very very rewarding for those of us who look for excellent writing, plotting, and "something different." It will leave and indelible mark in your reading-mind.

In the summer of 1926, Miss Elizabeth Channing steps off the bus in Chatham, Massachusetts on Cape Cod, to teach art at the Chatham Boys School. She will be living in a small cottage outside of town on Black Pond, her only neighbor, a married, literature teacher, Leland Reed. So begins The Chatham School Affair, narrated by the headmaster's son, Henry Griswald. Henry takes the reader back to that year, in a spellbinding, moving story of the events that led, to what the townspeople will always call, the Chatham School affair. This is not just a suspense thriller or mystery novel, but a sensitive, compelling story of how the power of the spoken word, once said, can never be taken back or undone and can change, forever the course of many lives. With his eloquent writing and subtle plot twists, Mr. Cook keeps the reader off balance, always guessing and never quite sure, all the way to the climactic ending. His characters come alive on the page and his scenes are so riveting and vivid, they are sometimes painful to read. A stunning story of love, loss and betrayal. Thomas Cook deserved all the awards The Chatham School Affair won.

Let me start off with a warning: even though this book is very good, and well deserves its Edgar, perhaps reading it will not be the best thing for you.For one thing, its narrative structure requires some attention from the reader. The action on which the narrator reflects takes place in the 1920's. The point of view shifts between the present and a moving index in the past, an index which inexorably creeps up on the disaster. Meanwhile we are given misleading hints and scraps of information about what will happen. Actually, the narrative is not so much like seeing one thing, then another. It is like watching a dithered image come up on your computer screen: first you get rough outlines, then the details are filled in, until finally all the pixels are filled in. But the last pixels are the important ones, in this case.Most intelligent readers can handle that kind of variation from normal style, but some can't, and if you can't you should read something else. But that's not the main danger. Once the details are all filled in - on the last page - and you get a good look at the picture, you will not be happier for it. It will be sort of like one of Dore's engravings for Dante's "Inferno": a very well done picture of something horrible.I am using the words "horror" and "horrible" in a very deliberate sense. I don't mean in the Stephen King sense of non-human ghouls and monsters. What I am associating with the word "horror" is a sense of inescapable disaster befalling people who don't deserve it, and for no reason that you will find at all compatible with the notion of a "fair universe". It's not enjoyable to look at, and that's why the craft of horror writing often involves sneaking up on the reader and sticking it in his/her face before he/she can get away.Well, after you have allowed yourself to care for the characters - and there are no villains in the piece - you will, at the end, find out who dies, and how, and who suffers, and how, and why. And it will be a very bleak picture - a picture of great artistic integrity, but without any pleasant highlights whatever. And there is a distinct possibility that you will say to yourself, "Why did I read this? Why did I look upon this picture, which will now depress me for the rest of the day or longer?"I'm really not kidding about this. However, on balance, I am glad I read this book. It is, in fact, a horror novel about ethics. The disaster which envelops the narrator (then an adolescent boy at his father's private school on Cape Cod), and the teachers he loves, and everyone and everything else he values, is ultimately one of conflicting imperatives. Conform to hidebound convention, or cast it off? Follow your heart, or lock it away? Do your duty, or abandon it? Help your loved ones, or remain aloof? Mercy, or accountability? St. Augustine, I think, made the point that sin is virtue perverted or overdone. Therefore, the mere fact that you are

I read this book several months ago and with Mr. Cook's latest PLACES IN THE DARK set to come out in May '00, I've picked up a couple more. My review is that this is a wonderful story. I grew up partly in a small town in Southwestern Oklahoma and most if not all of the images and characters Mr. Cook created in CHATHAM SCHOOL AFFAIR is so familiar to me. The story itself is melancholy, wistful. With each page I turn, I know I'm drawing closer to a sad ending but I can't help hoping that it's going to come out differently. I just finished his book BREAKHEART HILL as well and his books are completely different from the usual cliched detective novels that glut the mystery racks. Every time I finish one of his books, each one makes me feel as if I don't treat my fellow human beings as well as they should be treated. Mr. Cook takes me to a place I'd like to call home in each of the books I've read so far. He's spoiled me and I wish more writers would write the same type tales he spins.