The Dead School

Having already read McCabe's chilling book, The Butcher Boy, I was looking forward to a repeat of the damaged but sympathetic characters and the delicious horror one finds there. This novel, however, boasts a broader scope and more subtle characterization than The Butcher Boy. More ambitious, but just as seductive, it boasts two main characters of different generations and personalities, colliding with nightmarish results. Because the characters are so normal, even happy, at the beginning, and their deterioration seems so accidental and avoidable, the sense of sadness and loss one feels at the end is even more intense. Malachy Dudgeon is a young man whose childhood, though not ideal, is not bizarre, either. As a boy, he experiences love and security within his family, which more than outweighs any damage from bullying he faces by older kids, even when his family situation changes. Eventually, he goes to college, falls in love, becomes a teacher almost by accident, and is hired to work in a private boys' school in Dublin. Raphael Bell is his Headmaster. We learn of Raphael's almost idyllic childhood, his great success as a student, his firm friendships, his early career, and his shy love and eventual marriage. Passages of great, lyrical beauty pervade these descriptions. Inexorably, however, Bell's conservative, moralistic, and formal approaches to life and education come into conflict with the casual attitudes toward discipline, structure, scholarship, and traditional values which Malachy represents, and the fabric of their lives unravels, then shreds. McCabe creates wonderful, understandable characters facing conflicts not unlike those many of us face, and voices so real we can recognize even their inflections. By deliberately evoking the feeling that if only we were there we might be able to help, he cleverly involves the reader in the action. For a teacher, however, he may dredge up real nightmares--of rude or surly students, impatient and demanding parents, classes for which more preparation was essential, compromises made because there was simply Not Enough Time, along with pedagogical conflicts between strict standards and flexible, creative learning. All of these issues come into play here, and they will keep you thinking long after you finish the book. Mary Whipple

One of the best books I have ever read - totally compelling read

Once again McCabe astounds. More haunting portraits of madness. People who suffer from devastating mental illnesses didn't become that way overnight. The characters in this book, much like the characters in THE BUTCHER BOY, suffer numerous insults and injuries at the hands of others. A masterful presentation of universal impulses.

McCabe is one of the most introspective and naughty young novelists to hit the shelves this decade. His faculty with the third-person limited point of view is worth the price of admission. He inhabits these characters, who become unforgettable for their anachronistic manias and sensitivities. They are at once utterly recognizable and thankfully foreign. McCabe's wit is punchy and searing. This novelist is a cynic at first glance, but the slow transformation of his characters puts the lie to this; McCabe will not let go of the possibility of redemption for even the most debased. He is Irish after all.

When I chose Patrick McCabe's "The Dead School" from the shelf at my local bookstore, I expected nothing more than an interesting summer read. I soon found that McCabe's grasp of plot, dialogue, and tone would disturb as well as delight me. The main action of the novel is set in the Dublin of the mid-1970s. Raphael Bell, principal of St. Anthony's National School, and Malachy Dudgeon, a new, and not-very-dedicated teacher clash in a spectacular and haunting way. McCabe's understanding of the psychological motivations of his characters, and his detailed analysis of the parallel deterioration of the two men is first-rate. McCabe also has an extremely skillful ear when rendering dialect. The narrator's voice, for example, could have been that of a number of my Dublin friends, although its ostensible charm covers a heart that seems to delight in the tragedy that befalls Messrs. Bell and Dudgeon. All in all a rewarding and riveting novel.