Harris is a wonderful, diverse author

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	• Gentlemen and Players : A Novel Joanne Harris, 2006 - 432 pages average customer review:based on 56 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

What a novel

What a novel. This novel, about gentlemen and players, was really something. It had everything you would expect from a novel...interesting ideas, well-formed paragraphs, hyphens in particularly long words. I think that Joanne Harris was attempting, in this novel, to convey some ideas she believed that readers would find interesting. And that she did! Kudos to Ms. Harris. I can't wait for her next novel. I hope that it, like Gentlemen and Players: A Novel, beguiles me with her carefully constructed descriptions of things.

Reviewer's note: My wife ordered this book. I never read it. But Amazon asked that I "Review my recent purchase". I hope my review helps you if you--or your wife--are looking for a good book.

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Just about as good as it gets!

This book has it all - great character development, great plotting and a great finish. Few authors achieve 2 of 3 but Harris attains what should be the ultimate goal of all novelists - an all-round great read. Enough has been said regarding the contents - I merely wish to add my praise to the fray.

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Very well-written and entertaining!

St. Oswald's is your stereotypical British prep school for boys. For generations, its majestic stone buildings have been full of the children of the rich, being taught the classics, "maths," history, and Latin by a series of stuffy professors in robes. Now, though, the school is going through some changes. They've gotten their first computer lab, school memos now go out via email, and 64 year-old Roy Straitley, St. Oswald's Latin teacher, isn't taking too well to the changes. Not the least because he knows that, slowly but surely, Oswald's administrators are trying to nudge him out the door to retirement.

As the school year begins, five young, bright-eyed teachers have been hired, and Roy's office has been usurped by the foreign language department. He's pretty cranky, but is determined to make his "century" (teaching one hundred school terms in a row) before calling it a career. This year's new term has brought more than modern computer labs and youthful teachers, though-- it's also brought someone who knows St. Oswald's very, very well. Someone with a grudge against it. Someone who wants to destroy it. This someone has a complex, elaborate, and slowly-paced plan -- a plan intended to gradually take down the entire place and everyone in it. Standing in the way of this destruction is none other than old man Roy Straitley himself.

And he doesn't even know it.

This is a well-written and extremely entertaining novel, with a twist that completely caught me by surprise (a rare thing, and thus a much-appreciated one). Gentlemen & Players has a great plot, terrific characters, and a wonderfully drawn setting in St. Oswald's. I definitely recommend this one highly, and I'll be looking for Harris's earlier novels soon!

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Brit Lit with Twist!

Brit Lit with Twist! As I read the closing chapters, I kept thinking "well-done." In the hands of a lesser author, this tale would be trite or just completely fall apart, but Harris is a masterful writer and this book is delicious. Definitely lives up to the cliche praise of once you finish, you want to turn back to the first page and start again--mostly because you are thinking, "how did she do that?"

Chess metaphors abound. "British-isms" season each page. Descriptions are literary and evocative. Again, good literature is timely and universal and G&P is particularly apropos when considering the friction (perceived or real) between social classes. Bravo of the highest order. Two days after finishing, I was still missing my morning tea with Mr. Straitley.

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Harris is a wonderful, diverse author

First Sentence: "If there's one thing I've learned in the past fifteen years, it's this; that murder is really no big deal."

Roy Straitley is Latin master at St. Oswald's, a long-established boy's grammar school. Although there have always been incidences of disruption through the years, there's been nothing with the frequency and maliciousness of events being perpetrated against students and teachers at present. Although the incidents seem unrelated, Straitley begins to see a pattern. The child of the school's ground's keeper has been harboring a grudge for thirteen years. Now is the time to exact revenge.

It took me a bit to realize the alternating voices of the story but, once realized, I never had a problem identifying the speaker of each section. Harris really brings us into the world of a private English boy's school with all the traditions contrasted by changes in technology and the times. The story is intricately plotted, building upon itself bit by bit with unexpected twists and unusual ending. I loved the character of Straitley; a traditionalist with a wry sense of humor. This is a wonderfully written book, well worth the effort of grasping the two POVs. Highly recommended

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