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Alone in the Classroom
In a small prairie school in 1929, Connie Flood helps a backward student, Michael Graves, learn how to read. Observing them and darkening their lives is the principal, Parley Burns, whose strange behaviour culminates in an attack so disturbing its repercussions continue to the present day.
Connie’s niece, Anne, tells the story. Impelled by curiosity about her dynamic, adventurous aunt and her more conventional mother, she revisits Connie’s past and her mother’s broken childhood. In the process, she unravels the enigma of Parley Burns and the mysterious (and unrelated) deaths of two young girls. As the novel moves deeper into their lives, the triangle of principal, teacher, student opens out into other emotional triangles â€� aunt, niece, lover; mother, daughter, granddaughter â€� until a sudden, capsizing love thrusts Anne herself into a newly independent life.Ìý
This spellbinding tale � set in Saskatchewan and the Ottawa Valley � crosses generations and cuts to the bone. It probes the roots of obsessive love and hate, how the hurts and desires of childhood persist and are passed on as if in the blood. It lays bare the urgency of discovering what we were never told about the past. And it celebrates the process of becoming who we are in a world full of startling connections that lie just out of sight.
Following her award-winning, #1 bestselling Late Nights on Air, Alone in the Classroom is Elizabeth Hay’s most intricate, compelling, and seductive novel yet
Connie’s niece, Anne, tells the story. Impelled by curiosity about her dynamic, adventurous aunt and her more conventional mother, she revisits Connie’s past and her mother’s broken childhood. In the process, she unravels the enigma of Parley Burns and the mysterious (and unrelated) deaths of two young girls. As the novel moves deeper into their lives, the triangle of principal, teacher, student opens out into other emotional triangles â€� aunt, niece, lover; mother, daughter, granddaughter â€� until a sudden, capsizing love thrusts Anne herself into a newly independent life.Ìý
This spellbinding tale � set in Saskatchewan and the Ottawa Valley � crosses generations and cuts to the bone. It probes the roots of obsessive love and hate, how the hurts and desires of childhood persist and are passed on as if in the blood. It lays bare the urgency of discovering what we were never told about the past. And it celebrates the process of becoming who we are in a world full of startling connections that lie just out of sight.
Following her award-winning, #1 bestselling Late Nights on Air, Alone in the Classroom is Elizabeth Hay’s most intricate, compelling, and seductive novel yet
320 pages, Hardcover
First published April 26, 2011
58 people are currently reading
1815 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Hay
26Ìýbooks305ÌýfollowersFrom Elizabeth Hay's web site:
"Elizabeth Hay was born in Owen Sound, Ontario, the daughter of a high school principal and a painter, and one of four children. When she was fifteen, a year in England opened up her world and set her on the path to becoming a writer. She attended the University of Toronto, then moved out west, and in 1974 went north to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. For the next ten years she worked as a CBC radio broadcaster in Yellowknife, Winnipeg, and Toronto, and eventually freelanced from Mexico. In 1986 she moved from Mexico to New York City, and in 1992, with her husband and two children, she returned to Canada, settling in Ottawa, where she has lived ever since.
In 2007 Elizabeth Hay's third novel, Late Nights on Air, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her first novel was A Student of Weather (2000), a finalist for the Giller Prize, the Ottawa Book Award, and the Pearson Canada Reader's Choice Award at The Word on the Street, and winner of the CAA MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction and the TORGI Award. Her second novel, Garbo Laughs (2003), won the Ottawa Book Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award. Hay is also the author of Crossing the Snow Line (stories, 1989); The Only Snow in Havana (non-fiction, 1992), which was a co-winner of the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction; Captivity Tales: Canadians in New York (non-fiction, 1993), and Small Change (stories, 1997), which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Book Award, and the Rogers Communications Writers� Trust Fiction Prize. Hay received the Marian Engel Award for her body of work in 2002."
"Elizabeth Hay was born in Owen Sound, Ontario, the daughter of a high school principal and a painter, and one of four children. When she was fifteen, a year in England opened up her world and set her on the path to becoming a writer. She attended the University of Toronto, then moved out west, and in 1974 went north to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. For the next ten years she worked as a CBC radio broadcaster in Yellowknife, Winnipeg, and Toronto, and eventually freelanced from Mexico. In 1986 she moved from Mexico to New York City, and in 1992, with her husband and two children, she returned to Canada, settling in Ottawa, where she has lived ever since.
In 2007 Elizabeth Hay's third novel, Late Nights on Air, won the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her first novel was A Student of Weather (2000), a finalist for the Giller Prize, the Ottawa Book Award, and the Pearson Canada Reader's Choice Award at The Word on the Street, and winner of the CAA MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction and the TORGI Award. Her second novel, Garbo Laughs (2003), won the Ottawa Book Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award. Hay is also the author of Crossing the Snow Line (stories, 1989); The Only Snow in Havana (non-fiction, 1992), which was a co-winner of the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction; Captivity Tales: Canadians in New York (non-fiction, 1993), and Small Change (stories, 1997), which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Book Award, and the Rogers Communications Writers� Trust Fiction Prize. Hay received the Marian Engel Award for her body of work in 2002."
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 409 reviews
November 18, 2022
Why I chose to read this book:
1. I purchased my copy at a local library's annual book sale. As a retired teacher, the title caught my eye, and the synopsis sounded even better; and,
2. July 2022 is my self-declared "Canadian Authors Month".
Praises:
1. writing style: a descriptive, eloquent, moving character-driven novel. Author 's literary prose is so authentic, so poetic, so metaphorical that I had to stop and savor the underlying messages throughout the book;
2. characterization: every character is so complex - uninhibited, shameless, dynamic, sometimes sinister - should I be sympathetic towards them or not? and,
3. I learned about a horrific piece of Canadian history that was part of this story. In eastern Ontario, the Almonte train wreck of 1942 was a wartime tragedy. A troop train slammed into the back of a passenger train, killing 36 people and injuring 207. (I learn something new every time I read!)
Overall Thoughts:
I was quite drawn to the strong characterization and mesmerizing writing style. It was so thought-provoking, that it stayed with me long after I finished reading it. Hayes is a master of "showing", not "telling", the truth. I own, and will most definitely read, her debut novel, !
Recommendation?
If you prefer linear, straightforward plot-driven storylines, then try a different book. But if you enjoy stories that flash back and forth with a strong poetic writing style, then this book is for you!
1. I purchased my copy at a local library's annual book sale. As a retired teacher, the title caught my eye, and the synopsis sounded even better; and,
2. July 2022 is my self-declared "Canadian Authors Month".
Praises:
1. writing style: a descriptive, eloquent, moving character-driven novel. Author 's literary prose is so authentic, so poetic, so metaphorical that I had to stop and savor the underlying messages throughout the book;
2. characterization: every character is so complex - uninhibited, shameless, dynamic, sometimes sinister - should I be sympathetic towards them or not? and,
3. I learned about a horrific piece of Canadian history that was part of this story. In eastern Ontario, the Almonte train wreck of 1942 was a wartime tragedy. A troop train slammed into the back of a passenger train, killing 36 people and injuring 207. (I learn something new every time I read!)
Overall Thoughts:
I was quite drawn to the strong characterization and mesmerizing writing style. It was so thought-provoking, that it stayed with me long after I finished reading it. Hayes is a master of "showing", not "telling", the truth. I own, and will most definitely read, her debut novel, !
Recommendation?
If you prefer linear, straightforward plot-driven storylines, then try a different book. But if you enjoy stories that flash back and forth with a strong poetic writing style, then this book is for you!
May 19, 2014
For a book about the horrible murder of one young girl, an attack on another, stalking, obsession, and numerous affairs and broken marriages, there's surprisingly little urgency. The whole thing felt very detached from events that I would expect to feel compelling, but from which the narrative kept its emotional distance.
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at
Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the changes in Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.
In the meantime, you can read the entire review at
May 3, 2012
It is rare that I am as frustrated by a novel as I was with this one. Hay chooses Connie's niece Anne as the narrator and her view of things is inaccurate and unsatisfying to say the least. I wanted to know more about Connie, Michael and Syd because I really liked them. I also wanted to find out if Parley had raped Susan and killed Ethel. I wondered how Anne, a third party, could possibly know things like the scene between Parley and Susan Graves.
Everything just seemed muddled. The timeline and subjects kept jumping around, and I found myself having to concentrate very hard just to figure out what was going on.
I was also a bit creeped out by the theme of teachers having sex with students. Syd sleeps with Connie, Connie sleeps with Michael and Parley presumably sleeps with Susan and Ethel. Just because a teacher is a favoured mentor does not mean the relationship between the student and teacher will turn sexual. I know most of them were adults when the sex took place, but it still feels like an abuse of power.
Anne sleeping with Michael, her aunt Connie's lover, just disgusted me. I know Michael was a player but I had hoped he had more sense than that, especially when Anne talks about how Connie thinks she is the reincarnation of Susan Graves, Michael's sister. Suddenly their relationship is even more incestuous. Gross.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. It reminded me of the last time I was so frustrated with a book, and that was Underground by June Hutton.
Everything just seemed muddled. The timeline and subjects kept jumping around, and I found myself having to concentrate very hard just to figure out what was going on.
I was also a bit creeped out by the theme of teachers having sex with students. Syd sleeps with Connie, Connie sleeps with Michael and Parley presumably sleeps with Susan and Ethel. Just because a teacher is a favoured mentor does not mean the relationship between the student and teacher will turn sexual. I know most of them were adults when the sex took place, but it still feels like an abuse of power.
Anne sleeping with Michael, her aunt Connie's lover, just disgusted me. I know Michael was a player but I had hoped he had more sense than that, especially when Anne talks about how Connie thinks she is the reincarnation of Susan Graves, Michael's sister. Suddenly their relationship is even more incestuous. Gross.
I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. It reminded me of the last time I was so frustrated with a book, and that was Underground by June Hutton.
October 22, 2011
This is a tough book to review. I'm torn by the fact that Hay is a marvellous, compelling, powerful writer, but seems to have struggled with the focus of this novel rather unsuccessfully and inconclusively. Who is the protagonist? Who is the antagonist? You could make a case for at least two characters for each of these roles. The protagonist might be the narrator Anne - or it could be her aunt Connie. The antagonist could be the high school principal whose actions lead to at least one of his student's deaths before his descent into madness - or it could be Connie's dyslexic student Michael, the brother of the girl whose death the principal causes.
The inclusion of the murder of a young girl in the Ottawa Valley is never successfully integrated into the plot - yes, the young man accused of the murder is championed by the high school principal. But why is it there, really? As a plot device to get school teacher turned journalist Connie to return to her home and discover what's happened to her former boss it's weak - as is Connie's vacillation between careers - teaching, writing, and teaching again. Anne never comes clearly into focus as a character and the segues that explore the odd choices she makes weaken the novel's structure significantly.
Definitely worth reading for the writing alone, but you may well find the plot unsatisfying and even slightly unbelievable. I still like Hay's first novel, A Student of Weather best, and plan to reread it.
But for another view, do read Aritha Van Herk's in the Globe and Mail:
The inclusion of the murder of a young girl in the Ottawa Valley is never successfully integrated into the plot - yes, the young man accused of the murder is championed by the high school principal. But why is it there, really? As a plot device to get school teacher turned journalist Connie to return to her home and discover what's happened to her former boss it's weak - as is Connie's vacillation between careers - teaching, writing, and teaching again. Anne never comes clearly into focus as a character and the segues that explore the odd choices she makes weaken the novel's structure significantly.
Definitely worth reading for the writing alone, but you may well find the plot unsatisfying and even slightly unbelievable. I still like Hay's first novel, A Student of Weather best, and plan to reread it.
But for another view, do read Aritha Van Herk's in the Globe and Mail:
April 11, 2018
I've never read anything by Elizabeth Hay before and I am glad I've picked up this book. It is a family history written in a slow-burning beautiful style. She writes without any desire to impress. And this actually makes the book very memorable. It reads almost like a biography, very personal. And it made me think how much of our destiny is predetermined by our knowledge of our family history... Is it better to know or not to know? What is the role of a collective memory transferred from the one generation to another?
And at the core of the book is also the power of passion revealed with the poignant force.
And at the core of the book is also the power of passion revealed with the poignant force.
June 8, 2011
In this spectacularly subtle novel, Giller prizewinner Elizabeth Hay (for Late Nights on Air) braids family history and natural history, and paints an intricate, beguiling portrait of rural Canadian life in Saskatchewan and in the Ottawa Valley. Spanning the years 1927-2007, it opens up with the brutal murder of young schoolgirl Ethel Wier in 1937 Argyle (in Saskatchewan), a silver pail of chokecherries spilled near her bruised and battered body. This tragedy unfolds not in isolation, but connects gradually to a confluence of other markers in the history of the Flood family, and culminates in an unbearably beautiful graveyard scene that encompasses various strands and prongs of multi-generational lives.
"You touch a place and thousands of miles away another place quivers. You touch a person and down the line the ghosts of relatives move in the wind."
Historian and writer Anne Flood takes a back seat in the first two-thirds of the novel, relating the story of her fiercely independent aunt and schoolteacher, Connie Flood, a woman of "unzipped, risqué fun." This also signals the incipient events of Connie's family commingling with Anne's. At the library, Anne stumbles across some facets of history that have fallen into the crevices of time.
"...a child discovers something the parent has neglected to tell her and brings it into view again, naming it and locating it and establishing its importance." And this is the thematic thrust of the novel.
Sentient life is thickly threaded with the landscape, from the fertile marshland to the ripe vegetation, the narrow dirt roads and woody smells of childhood, the wide flat rocks and wildflowers, the dry and liquid movement of the seasons.
"Here is the country not in its Sunday best, but in its old clothes, unpaved, unfenced, full of character, ungroomed, unvisited, barely penetrable."
Connie is the centerpiece for much of the novel, along with the two men that affected her deeply, but in different ways. "Parley" Ian Burns, the principal and schoolteacher that she worked with in 1929 when she was just eighteen, both repulsed and attracted her.
"All around her was the curdled essence of this clever man, who found ways to bind you to him, to get you into his pot, where you simmered."
Burns was an inscrutable, fastidious Francophile who was thwarted by his own failed achievements as an actor and playwright, and used his authority and wolfish charm to terrorize the students and magnetize the teachers. Connie sympathized with him at intervals, when he revealed himself in ways that brought out pity and sorrow in her heart. She gave him the benefit of the doubt for a while, until a tragic incident with a schoolgirl brought about a summary exit of characters from this county.
"The town doesn't exist anymore. It rose overnight from whole grass into wooden sidewalks, railway station, grain elevators, houses, stores, churches, school. Then life rubbed the other way and the pattern disappeared."
Parley had staged a theatrical version of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, with the willowy thirteen-year-old Susan Graves as the lead. He was a brazen, ruthless director, able to bring out the animal, erotic facets of the story, and ripen Susan into a purposeful actress, a "sunned cat" of a Tess--the physical transformation of a young girl. However, he maintained his hold on her after the play, with a staggering crescendo.
Michael Graves--Susan's brother--was a dyslexic student before dyslexia was even recognized, and his broody, outdoor intelligence and artistic sense earned Connie's respect and compassion. He was one year older than Susan but three grades behind, and his self-esteem was nil until Connie helped bolster his enthusiasm for learning and participating.
"A child lies like a grey pebble on the shore until a certain teacher picks him up and dips him in water, and suddenly you see all the colours and patterns in the dull stone..."
As events move along, the intersections of time and tragedies, students and teachers, historians and artists, past and present, and memories and absences fall into place. Anne becomes a more active character in the story as well as the historian. This is a slow, gradual cohesion, not a narrative meant for anticipation or epiphanies, not a story centered on plot. Characters, and especially themes glue the story together. It is driven by its own poetic odyssey of land and civilization.
I have never been this compelled to quote so much from a book in a review, but as is stated so well in the story, "A sentence bears the weight of the world." Every sentence in this rare and polished story is like a pure, clear drop of water, and every drop spreads into the next, and the next, like a current, forming a flowing river of words that course into the mouth of the story.
It would be impossible to cover this novel comprehensively in a review, as there are several characters, movements and kaleidoscopic shifts and turns that bring the story into focus. Perhaps the difficulty in trying to pinpoint a center could be summed up within Anne's reflection that:
"There is such intricate movement in things as they happen and such stiffness and resistance when you go back and try to reconstruct them."
This is a story most appreciated by reading it twice, with a slow, patient, and languid turning of pages. It is a meditative, seeping novel, an exquisite story of the narrowness and infinity of humanity and family, of obsession and passion, of things unseen but powerfully registered. There are triangles of fate and unrestrained destinies. As Connie asserts, we carry the past forward, even when things and people are obliterated. Take this masterpiece to a quiet corner, and experience its unhurried grace.
"You touch a place and thousands of miles away another place quivers. You touch a person and down the line the ghosts of relatives move in the wind."
Historian and writer Anne Flood takes a back seat in the first two-thirds of the novel, relating the story of her fiercely independent aunt and schoolteacher, Connie Flood, a woman of "unzipped, risqué fun." This also signals the incipient events of Connie's family commingling with Anne's. At the library, Anne stumbles across some facets of history that have fallen into the crevices of time.
"...a child discovers something the parent has neglected to tell her and brings it into view again, naming it and locating it and establishing its importance." And this is the thematic thrust of the novel.
Sentient life is thickly threaded with the landscape, from the fertile marshland to the ripe vegetation, the narrow dirt roads and woody smells of childhood, the wide flat rocks and wildflowers, the dry and liquid movement of the seasons.
"Here is the country not in its Sunday best, but in its old clothes, unpaved, unfenced, full of character, ungroomed, unvisited, barely penetrable."
Connie is the centerpiece for much of the novel, along with the two men that affected her deeply, but in different ways. "Parley" Ian Burns, the principal and schoolteacher that she worked with in 1929 when she was just eighteen, both repulsed and attracted her.
"All around her was the curdled essence of this clever man, who found ways to bind you to him, to get you into his pot, where you simmered."
Burns was an inscrutable, fastidious Francophile who was thwarted by his own failed achievements as an actor and playwright, and used his authority and wolfish charm to terrorize the students and magnetize the teachers. Connie sympathized with him at intervals, when he revealed himself in ways that brought out pity and sorrow in her heart. She gave him the benefit of the doubt for a while, until a tragic incident with a schoolgirl brought about a summary exit of characters from this county.
"The town doesn't exist anymore. It rose overnight from whole grass into wooden sidewalks, railway station, grain elevators, houses, stores, churches, school. Then life rubbed the other way and the pattern disappeared."
Parley had staged a theatrical version of Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, with the willowy thirteen-year-old Susan Graves as the lead. He was a brazen, ruthless director, able to bring out the animal, erotic facets of the story, and ripen Susan into a purposeful actress, a "sunned cat" of a Tess--the physical transformation of a young girl. However, he maintained his hold on her after the play, with a staggering crescendo.
Michael Graves--Susan's brother--was a dyslexic student before dyslexia was even recognized, and his broody, outdoor intelligence and artistic sense earned Connie's respect and compassion. He was one year older than Susan but three grades behind, and his self-esteem was nil until Connie helped bolster his enthusiasm for learning and participating.
"A child lies like a grey pebble on the shore until a certain teacher picks him up and dips him in water, and suddenly you see all the colours and patterns in the dull stone..."
As events move along, the intersections of time and tragedies, students and teachers, historians and artists, past and present, and memories and absences fall into place. Anne becomes a more active character in the story as well as the historian. This is a slow, gradual cohesion, not a narrative meant for anticipation or epiphanies, not a story centered on plot. Characters, and especially themes glue the story together. It is driven by its own poetic odyssey of land and civilization.
I have never been this compelled to quote so much from a book in a review, but as is stated so well in the story, "A sentence bears the weight of the world." Every sentence in this rare and polished story is like a pure, clear drop of water, and every drop spreads into the next, and the next, like a current, forming a flowing river of words that course into the mouth of the story.
It would be impossible to cover this novel comprehensively in a review, as there are several characters, movements and kaleidoscopic shifts and turns that bring the story into focus. Perhaps the difficulty in trying to pinpoint a center could be summed up within Anne's reflection that:
"There is such intricate movement in things as they happen and such stiffness and resistance when you go back and try to reconstruct them."
This is a story most appreciated by reading it twice, with a slow, patient, and languid turning of pages. It is a meditative, seeping novel, an exquisite story of the narrowness and infinity of humanity and family, of obsession and passion, of things unseen but powerfully registered. There are triangles of fate and unrestrained destinies. As Connie asserts, we carry the past forward, even when things and people are obliterated. Take this masterpiece to a quiet corner, and experience its unhurried grace.
June 12, 2011
Writing about the interweaving of human relationships is not an easy task, even for the best of writers. But fortunately, Elizabeth Hay is among the best in writers. In fact, she may be one of the very finest writers at work in Canada today.
Rich in imaginings, masterfully conceived, flawlessly executed, Alone in the Classroom is a nuanced book, told by the present day perspective of Anne who is researching her family history.
It’s a book not easily defined � part murder mystery, part historical memoir, part travelogue, part character study. The characters in question are Connie Flood, Anne’s free-spirited and adventurous aunt…Parley Burns, the school’s shadowy and enigmatic principal whose actions set in force a tragedy…and Michael Graves, a secretly intelligent student who is struggling with what now would be labeled dyslexia.
The triangle of these three � teacher, student, and principal � is no accident. Ms. Hay is no doubt aware of the symbolism of “three� in all major religions � the Trinity in the Christian faith, the male/female/uniting intelligence in the Kaballah, the Triple Gem in the Buddhist tradition and so on. The number three represents permanence, and so it is here.
“The first triangle in one’s life is always the father, mother and child,� Anne muses. “It sets the troubled tone.� And later, when she walks barefoot down paths swims towards loons, she recognizes that “they went at it beak to beak. Three birds, and one of them an intruder.�
These emotional triangles � and the intrusions of one person into an established pair � is a major sub-theme that plays out in all kinds of ways: mother, daughter, grandmother…aunt, niece, lover…husband, wife, love interest…father, son, sister…two dead girls and the potential murderer…and so on.
Elizabeth Hay masterfully establishes these triangles and then explores the outer boundaries of their realities. “I’m reminded of what Michael said about memory: the facts don’t matter; everything you learn blurs and merges and contributes to a way of seeing the world.�
Perceptions change as one reads on. Sympathetic characters become less sympathetic; obtuse characters become more understandable; connections become more tenuous, and the monsters among us become more nuanced. The author never takes the easy way out as she reveals how the past informs the present, and how the present influences the future.
We are all, Elizabeth Hay suggests, alone in the classroom, carrying forth the scars (figuratively and literally) from tender youth. “You don’t get over it, failure in elementary school,� says Michael, who grows up to be a Peter Pan character. And for the reader, you don’t get over the riveting and meticulously drawn prose, that permeates this entire book.
I would be remiss were I not to mention the glorious descriptions of the fictional Jewel, Saskatchewan. The ripening of the berries � raspberries (“the soft read fruit like gobbets of blood�), the blueberries (“abloom with ghostly light that erased itself in your fingers�), the jewelweed in blossom, the ripening tomatoes, the ruby-red chokeberries. As in her previous novels, the prose is at its richest in her descriptions of nature. This is a marvelous book, seductive, lingering, and, I suspect, unforgettable.
Rich in imaginings, masterfully conceived, flawlessly executed, Alone in the Classroom is a nuanced book, told by the present day perspective of Anne who is researching her family history.
It’s a book not easily defined � part murder mystery, part historical memoir, part travelogue, part character study. The characters in question are Connie Flood, Anne’s free-spirited and adventurous aunt…Parley Burns, the school’s shadowy and enigmatic principal whose actions set in force a tragedy…and Michael Graves, a secretly intelligent student who is struggling with what now would be labeled dyslexia.
The triangle of these three � teacher, student, and principal � is no accident. Ms. Hay is no doubt aware of the symbolism of “three� in all major religions � the Trinity in the Christian faith, the male/female/uniting intelligence in the Kaballah, the Triple Gem in the Buddhist tradition and so on. The number three represents permanence, and so it is here.
“The first triangle in one’s life is always the father, mother and child,� Anne muses. “It sets the troubled tone.� And later, when she walks barefoot down paths swims towards loons, she recognizes that “they went at it beak to beak. Three birds, and one of them an intruder.�
These emotional triangles � and the intrusions of one person into an established pair � is a major sub-theme that plays out in all kinds of ways: mother, daughter, grandmother…aunt, niece, lover…husband, wife, love interest…father, son, sister…two dead girls and the potential murderer…and so on.
Elizabeth Hay masterfully establishes these triangles and then explores the outer boundaries of their realities. “I’m reminded of what Michael said about memory: the facts don’t matter; everything you learn blurs and merges and contributes to a way of seeing the world.�
Perceptions change as one reads on. Sympathetic characters become less sympathetic; obtuse characters become more understandable; connections become more tenuous, and the monsters among us become more nuanced. The author never takes the easy way out as she reveals how the past informs the present, and how the present influences the future.
We are all, Elizabeth Hay suggests, alone in the classroom, carrying forth the scars (figuratively and literally) from tender youth. “You don’t get over it, failure in elementary school,� says Michael, who grows up to be a Peter Pan character. And for the reader, you don’t get over the riveting and meticulously drawn prose, that permeates this entire book.
I would be remiss were I not to mention the glorious descriptions of the fictional Jewel, Saskatchewan. The ripening of the berries � raspberries (“the soft read fruit like gobbets of blood�), the blueberries (“abloom with ghostly light that erased itself in your fingers�), the jewelweed in blossom, the ripening tomatoes, the ruby-red chokeberries. As in her previous novels, the prose is at its richest in her descriptions of nature. This is a marvelous book, seductive, lingering, and, I suspect, unforgettable.
July 17, 2011
I really liked "Student of Weather" and "Late Nights on Air" and was eager to read Hay's latest book. I was disappointed!
The story begins in 1929 when a very young Connie Flood starts teaching in rural Saskatchewan. She befriends a dyslexic boy, Michael, who idolizes her. Connie is confused and disconcerted by the behaviour of Parley Burns, the school principal, but finds support and guidance from Syd Goodwin, the school inspector. A tragedy occurs in the community and, soon after, Parley and Connie leave the school. In the mid-1930's Connie, no longer a teacher but a reporter, is working in Ottawa, when she comes across Parley, Sid and Michael and becomes closely involved with them once more.The book ends in 2008, long after the deaths of the main characters, but the story now focuses on Anne, Connie's niece. Anne appears briefly at the beginning of the book but dominates the story at the end, and the story is told through her voice.
Although some of the writing is beautiful and the characters are strong and vivid, there are many weaknesses in the book. It is far too much of a coincidence that the same characters who met in Saskatchewan should ALL find themselves together within reasonable distance of Ottawa some years later. The plot often seemed disjointed and the deaths of two young girls (one in Saskatchewan and one in the Ottawa Valley) seemed at a loose end. I, at least, did not feel they were blended skilfully into the plot. Moreover, the odd time Hay's writing lacked clarity. I borrowed "Alone in the Classroom" from the library and was surprised when, early on in the book, I saw that a previous reader had written the names of different characters on the pages in order to clarify who they were. I soon understood why! To me, this is not good writing. There is a difference between a complex plot that requires all the reader's attention and writing that is merely confusing!
I'll be interested to see what other readers thought of the book.
The story begins in 1929 when a very young Connie Flood starts teaching in rural Saskatchewan. She befriends a dyslexic boy, Michael, who idolizes her. Connie is confused and disconcerted by the behaviour of Parley Burns, the school principal, but finds support and guidance from Syd Goodwin, the school inspector. A tragedy occurs in the community and, soon after, Parley and Connie leave the school. In the mid-1930's Connie, no longer a teacher but a reporter, is working in Ottawa, when she comes across Parley, Sid and Michael and becomes closely involved with them once more.The book ends in 2008, long after the deaths of the main characters, but the story now focuses on Anne, Connie's niece. Anne appears briefly at the beginning of the book but dominates the story at the end, and the story is told through her voice.
Although some of the writing is beautiful and the characters are strong and vivid, there are many weaknesses in the book. It is far too much of a coincidence that the same characters who met in Saskatchewan should ALL find themselves together within reasonable distance of Ottawa some years later. The plot often seemed disjointed and the deaths of two young girls (one in Saskatchewan and one in the Ottawa Valley) seemed at a loose end. I, at least, did not feel they were blended skilfully into the plot. Moreover, the odd time Hay's writing lacked clarity. I borrowed "Alone in the Classroom" from the library and was surprised when, early on in the book, I saw that a previous reader had written the names of different characters on the pages in order to clarify who they were. I soon understood why! To me, this is not good writing. There is a difference between a complex plot that requires all the reader's attention and writing that is merely confusing!
I'll be interested to see what other readers thought of the book.
March 9, 2016
This saga set in set in Saskatchewan describes how circumstances associated with a murder ripple through several generations. So much of Elizabeth Hay’s prose compelled this reader to linger! She clearly has an eye for beauty in the outdoors and captures it skillfully�.. “Birds compete for the berries. Robins peck the guts out of strawberries. Finches, robins, blue jays, kingbirds, cedar waxwings � all of them go after the chokeberries that favor fencerows and roadsides and the edges of open woods. Crows fancy the metallic glints of the kettles and pails children carry as they wander in to the open center of wild plum thickets…�.
The realizations which crystallize as the years go by, as one’s perspective broadens, are poignantly wrought as well. ‘My father and I share the backseat. Rather late in the day, but not too late, I’ve come to appreciate the crusty humor and intelligence and melancholy thoughtfulness of this former principal, who at exam time would drive my brothers and me to his high school on Saturday morning and put each of us in a separate classroom to study until noon……� Exams loomed, as did my father in his office down the hall, working away and expecting his children to do the same�.
Another aspect I loved was the way the author depicts an inevitable ache - that which comes with the realization that some unasked questions will never be answered because loved ones have passed on. The story gathers momentum with the passage of time. Passionate undercurrents ebb and flow, and obsessive love surfaces, culminating in an unforgettable tale! Such strong writing, such vivid images! Four stars, maybe even five!
The realizations which crystallize as the years go by, as one’s perspective broadens, are poignantly wrought as well. ‘My father and I share the backseat. Rather late in the day, but not too late, I’ve come to appreciate the crusty humor and intelligence and melancholy thoughtfulness of this former principal, who at exam time would drive my brothers and me to his high school on Saturday morning and put each of us in a separate classroom to study until noon……� Exams loomed, as did my father in his office down the hall, working away and expecting his children to do the same�.
Another aspect I loved was the way the author depicts an inevitable ache - that which comes with the realization that some unasked questions will never be answered because loved ones have passed on. The story gathers momentum with the passage of time. Passionate undercurrents ebb and flow, and obsessive love surfaces, culminating in an unforgettable tale! Such strong writing, such vivid images! Four stars, maybe even five!
January 4, 2016
elizabeth hay is magical with her words and stories. it's amazing to me, her quiet but nuanced prose (if that makes sense?). i find that hay has a great ability to capture intimate details of human nature and convey them in her writing. but her style doesn't punch you in the face. it just sort of envelopes you gently yet she will still get deep into your bones. i sound like such a prig. sorry! :) i had the chance to hear hay read from this book a while ago and so it was nice having her voice in my mind while i was reading; she has a wonderful voice which isn't all that surprising given her years working in radio for the CBC. i never listen to audio books - but i wonder if she narrates her own works?
anyway...this story is great. it's unsettling and surprising. i was most fixated on the one thread woven through the story: the idea that the past is constantly being rediscovered and effects the lives of our families for years to come.
i was a bit surprised by the tiny, tiny bit of magical realism being dabbled with here - the idea of people being born as others from past lives - bringing memories, and birthmarks, into the new life they occupy. this was very interesting.
the only reason i didn't give this 5-stars is because of the structure. it's almost like two connected novellas and the move from one to the next was sudden. which is, for me, a marked contrast to the smooth nature of hay's style.
anyway...this story is great. it's unsettling and surprising. i was most fixated on the one thread woven through the story: the idea that the past is constantly being rediscovered and effects the lives of our families for years to come.
i was a bit surprised by the tiny, tiny bit of magical realism being dabbled with here - the idea of people being born as others from past lives - bringing memories, and birthmarks, into the new life they occupy. this was very interesting.
the only reason i didn't give this 5-stars is because of the structure. it's almost like two connected novellas and the move from one to the next was sudden. which is, for me, a marked contrast to the smooth nature of hay's style.
September 11, 2011
i recently read Sarah's Key which seems hugely popular right now. i thought it contrived and a little patronizing. and ... one of my biggest complaints was how the author tied up every emotional thread into a big bow at the end. i'm sure it was suppose to be satisfying but i did not find it so. it did not ring true to me at all.
Alone in the Classroom .... well, it's a bit messier, and therefore seems far more honest ... AND ... far more true-to-life. it took me a while to get into it ... probably because i was only reading a few pages at a time before bed. Hays jumps around in time, but also from first person narrator to third person. it wasn't till i devoted an entire afternoon to Hay's story that i got completely drawn in.
there is a wonderful passage describing the stones an artist paints over and over. another that describes leaving the highway for the gravel road and then the dirt road and then ... then suddenly the lake. short. prefectly contained descriptions that have nothing to do with the plot but adds such depth to her story. and yet, it is not an overly long book. Hays just knows what she is doing. and when she ends her story, she too ties up the various threads of the story .... but it is not a perfect bow. it is not all neat and tidy and pressed and phony. and it is perfectly satisfying.
Alone in the Classroom .... well, it's a bit messier, and therefore seems far more honest ... AND ... far more true-to-life. it took me a while to get into it ... probably because i was only reading a few pages at a time before bed. Hays jumps around in time, but also from first person narrator to third person. it wasn't till i devoted an entire afternoon to Hay's story that i got completely drawn in.
there is a wonderful passage describing the stones an artist paints over and over. another that describes leaving the highway for the gravel road and then the dirt road and then ... then suddenly the lake. short. prefectly contained descriptions that have nothing to do with the plot but adds such depth to her story. and yet, it is not an overly long book. Hays just knows what she is doing. and when she ends her story, she too ties up the various threads of the story .... but it is not a perfect bow. it is not all neat and tidy and pressed and phony. and it is perfectly satisfying.
September 13, 2011
I cannot believe that an author of Hay's ability could have started this project with an end to finishing it as she did.
The initial insertion briefly of first person Anne (a writer, we eventually discover, of Hay's sex, generation and mother's locale which tempts the reader into visions of creative non-fiction,) almost incidentally made the set up needlessly complex if not convoluted. It distracted greatly from what I found to be a story as gripping and powerful as Late Nights on Air, a story that crashed and burned in the final hundred pages as the reader was dragged back into a character with no story of her own except a vague resemblance to a prize winning author.
The story that I loved belonged to Connie (why would any reader care whose aunt she might have been) who adored and was adored by one of her students. The story that I loved hinged perfectly on a paradox of how affection born in that thrilling/ terrifying setting of a classroom after all but one student has escape to their own lives can magically heal or monstrously harm a student. That story focused on a protagonist with courage and intelligence. It focused on two unfortunate children, one cursed with dyslexia, the other with physical beauty. It examined all that is evil and good in a public education structure where one person is all powerful and others are powerless. The tension built. The trap set. A hero was either to be crowned or her failure to be mourned. Society as much as any character was ready to face its judge.
Re-enter Anne. The reader is expected to abandon thoughts of abuse and impropriety, justice and common sense in favour of genealogy and random homilies about minor characters. The reader is expected to pretend this was all a set up for the Sisterhood of the Travelling Boyfriend. Suddenly coincidences become outrageous. And when Anne apologizes to the reader for "coming at the story sideways" what Hay is really apologizing for is abandoning the real story for endless passages of "filler" about where that story might have (probably did according to the acknowledgments) come from in "real" time.
The initial insertion briefly of first person Anne (a writer, we eventually discover, of Hay's sex, generation and mother's locale which tempts the reader into visions of creative non-fiction,) almost incidentally made the set up needlessly complex if not convoluted. It distracted greatly from what I found to be a story as gripping and powerful as Late Nights on Air, a story that crashed and burned in the final hundred pages as the reader was dragged back into a character with no story of her own except a vague resemblance to a prize winning author.
The story that I loved belonged to Connie (why would any reader care whose aunt she might have been) who adored and was adored by one of her students. The story that I loved hinged perfectly on a paradox of how affection born in that thrilling/ terrifying setting of a classroom after all but one student has escape to their own lives can magically heal or monstrously harm a student. That story focused on a protagonist with courage and intelligence. It focused on two unfortunate children, one cursed with dyslexia, the other with physical beauty. It examined all that is evil and good in a public education structure where one person is all powerful and others are powerless. The tension built. The trap set. A hero was either to be crowned or her failure to be mourned. Society as much as any character was ready to face its judge.
Re-enter Anne. The reader is expected to abandon thoughts of abuse and impropriety, justice and common sense in favour of genealogy and random homilies about minor characters. The reader is expected to pretend this was all a set up for the Sisterhood of the Travelling Boyfriend. Suddenly coincidences become outrageous. And when Anne apologizes to the reader for "coming at the story sideways" what Hay is really apologizing for is abandoning the real story for endless passages of "filler" about where that story might have (probably did according to the acknowledgments) come from in "real" time.
February 23, 2019
3.5 rounded up.
Elizabeth is, without doubt, a good writer but in this book after 4/5ths of the book being worthy of 4 stars the last few chapters lost something. The mysteries within the story are not fully resolved, the guilty party is merely suggested and left open.
Michael having numerous affairs was disappointing but based on the childhood trauma experienced may justify his inability to find happiness.
The best of the story was the descriptions of past times in an interesting way.
Elizabeth is, without doubt, a good writer but in this book after 4/5ths of the book being worthy of 4 stars the last few chapters lost something. The mysteries within the story are not fully resolved, the guilty party is merely suggested and left open.
Michael having numerous affairs was disappointing but based on the childhood trauma experienced may justify his inability to find happiness.
The best of the story was the descriptions of past times in an interesting way.
July 9, 2013
I found the shifts in time and place a bit confusing. There's a certain remove to the narrative, similar to that of , though with perhaps less symmetry and focus. This book meanders. But that's alright. I suppose that's what Elizabeth Hay meant for it to do.
There's such truth and poetic simplicity to everything she writes. A lovely book.
There's such truth and poetic simplicity to everything she writes. A lovely book.
November 10, 2018
It is beautifully written. There are some absolutely lovely passages. On the other hand it often had me confused and left me frustrated. I know this isn’t the most helpful review but there you have it. You will likely be left wondering.
August 5, 2018
Gorgeous language, worth reading the book. But the story was soft and opaque, hard to grasp and didn't reveal.
February 28, 2012
"Nothing would give up life:
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath."
For it is in the verdant, succulent, jungle of memories and hopes that this book establishes itself, absorbing the reader in its tale of Eriksonian generativity. It is also a visual feast, akin to finding oneself in a world of post-impressionist painting, cavorting with the likes of Van Gogh, Cezanne and Monet. Hay's writing is visual, psychological and metaphorical. Her words sing and as she says in the book, "It's possible that a hidden symmetry is often at work as we stumble our way through life" and "we carry the past forward even when things and people are obliterated".
The story, on the surface, is about a woman named Anne who wants to understand her family and background. She is fascinated by her aunt Connie's life and she paints Connie's history. At eighteen years old, Connie was a teacher in Canada, a place that echoes the existence of the sub-arctic: blueberries, choke cherries, snow, blizzards, rocky terrain and tundra. It is impossible to speak of this story without including the landscape, an intrinsic part of what Hay writes about. "The whole landscape was a painting come to life."
Connie teaches middle school in a town called Jewel in Saskatchewan. Her principal is a man by the name of Parley Burns. "He smiled (when he smiled ) by baring his teeth, then holding the grimace to a count of five." "Parley moved through the school like mustard gas in subtle form. You were aware afterwards that you'd been poisoned." He is painted as a repellant character with a simultaneously sleezy aura of attractiveness. He is a sadist to the children and has a deep and unrequited love for Connie who finds him despicable and repellant.
As the book opens, a young woman is found murdered while picking choke cherries. A trial is held and a young man is first found guilty and then acquitted by a higher court for lack of sufficient evidence. Connie often wonders if Parley is the one who murdered her. He certainly has the personality that would make a reader wonder.
Another tragedy, unrelated to the first one, takes place and Parley is involved at the heart of its occurrence. His way with the girls in school is creepy. It is as if he has a pedophilic streak somewhere though this is nowhere overtly mentioned.
He arranges for the whole school to do a performance of Tess of the D'Urbervilles and has a high school student, Susan Graves, play the part. He makes much of the shame that Tess felt because of her `deflowering' and pregnancy. He directs Susan to act in an erotic manner though she is just fourteen. He frightens her into her role by terrorizing her beloved dog. Meanwhile, Connie takes a young man named Michael under her wing. In 1927, when the story opens, no one knows about dyslexia. This is what Michael suffers from and Connie is determined to help him learn to read and write with kindness and love. He is made to feel stupid and worthless by Parley and dreads the classroom where he is alone in his inability to learn. However, he is a master sculptor and carver and loves the outdoors. He is quick with words and uses them well. Connie and he form a deep and lasting rapport and love.
We also learn about Connie's loves, hopes and desires over her 84 years as the book takes us to 2007. Her life is an adventurous one, full to the brim, and comprises the first two thirds of this book. The last third is about Annie, the original narrator who is searching for her own present in her family's past. It is this last third of the book that is a bit of a let-down. It feels divorced from the first part and though it is interesting, it does not add to the cohesiveness of the book. If anything, it detracts from it.
The book is delicious. Each page holds descriptions one does not ever want to forget. Hay is a magician with words and this book is a synergy of her creativity. As she says so eloquently, "the facts don't matter; everything you learn blurs and merges and contributes to a way of seeing the world". Annie says, "I see history passing me by. I am standing on the sidelines and it is whirling past, and the people who come after me will see it one way and it won't be my way." I think the same can be said of this book. Everyone who reads it will see and feel it differently. There is so much here. It is like a rain forest of words and ideas, a different story for every reader, a beauty to be shared and talked about with your dearest friends who, hopefully, will also get to read this book.
Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath."
For it is in the verdant, succulent, jungle of memories and hopes that this book establishes itself, absorbing the reader in its tale of Eriksonian generativity. It is also a visual feast, akin to finding oneself in a world of post-impressionist painting, cavorting with the likes of Van Gogh, Cezanne and Monet. Hay's writing is visual, psychological and metaphorical. Her words sing and as she says in the book, "It's possible that a hidden symmetry is often at work as we stumble our way through life" and "we carry the past forward even when things and people are obliterated".
The story, on the surface, is about a woman named Anne who wants to understand her family and background. She is fascinated by her aunt Connie's life and she paints Connie's history. At eighteen years old, Connie was a teacher in Canada, a place that echoes the existence of the sub-arctic: blueberries, choke cherries, snow, blizzards, rocky terrain and tundra. It is impossible to speak of this story without including the landscape, an intrinsic part of what Hay writes about. "The whole landscape was a painting come to life."
Connie teaches middle school in a town called Jewel in Saskatchewan. Her principal is a man by the name of Parley Burns. "He smiled (when he smiled ) by baring his teeth, then holding the grimace to a count of five." "Parley moved through the school like mustard gas in subtle form. You were aware afterwards that you'd been poisoned." He is painted as a repellant character with a simultaneously sleezy aura of attractiveness. He is a sadist to the children and has a deep and unrequited love for Connie who finds him despicable and repellant.
As the book opens, a young woman is found murdered while picking choke cherries. A trial is held and a young man is first found guilty and then acquitted by a higher court for lack of sufficient evidence. Connie often wonders if Parley is the one who murdered her. He certainly has the personality that would make a reader wonder.
Another tragedy, unrelated to the first one, takes place and Parley is involved at the heart of its occurrence. His way with the girls in school is creepy. It is as if he has a pedophilic streak somewhere though this is nowhere overtly mentioned.
He arranges for the whole school to do a performance of Tess of the D'Urbervilles and has a high school student, Susan Graves, play the part. He makes much of the shame that Tess felt because of her `deflowering' and pregnancy. He directs Susan to act in an erotic manner though she is just fourteen. He frightens her into her role by terrorizing her beloved dog. Meanwhile, Connie takes a young man named Michael under her wing. In 1927, when the story opens, no one knows about dyslexia. This is what Michael suffers from and Connie is determined to help him learn to read and write with kindness and love. He is made to feel stupid and worthless by Parley and dreads the classroom where he is alone in his inability to learn. However, he is a master sculptor and carver and loves the outdoors. He is quick with words and uses them well. Connie and he form a deep and lasting rapport and love.
We also learn about Connie's loves, hopes and desires over her 84 years as the book takes us to 2007. Her life is an adventurous one, full to the brim, and comprises the first two thirds of this book. The last third is about Annie, the original narrator who is searching for her own present in her family's past. It is this last third of the book that is a bit of a let-down. It feels divorced from the first part and though it is interesting, it does not add to the cohesiveness of the book. If anything, it detracts from it.
The book is delicious. Each page holds descriptions one does not ever want to forget. Hay is a magician with words and this book is a synergy of her creativity. As she says so eloquently, "the facts don't matter; everything you learn blurs and merges and contributes to a way of seeing the world". Annie says, "I see history passing me by. I am standing on the sidelines and it is whirling past, and the people who come after me will see it one way and it won't be my way." I think the same can be said of this book. Everyone who reads it will see and feel it differently. There is so much here. It is like a rain forest of words and ideas, a different story for every reader, a beauty to be shared and talked about with your dearest friends who, hopefully, will also get to read this book.
May 5, 2014
"He had entered her life on the last day of September in 1929. Tweedy, sophisticated, perverse; an excellent teacher who doubled as principle. He arrived three weeks late, an otherwise punctual man. Jewel was the name of the town in the southwest corner of Saskatchewan". So starts Chapter 2 of this engrossing book. Alone in the Classroom is the third Elizabeth Hay book I've read. A Student of Weather is one of my all time favourite books. Late Nights On Air, a Giller prize winner, I also enjoyed. This one, in my mind would sit third of the three. As always, the descriptive prose of Ms. Hay is captivating and so many of her characters multi-faceted and fabulous. I loved the character of Connie Flood and therefore enjoyed the book most after she appeared here in Chapter 2 and throughout the story of Jewel which, although told through a third person narrator, Anne who was Connie's niece, was definitely told from Connie's point of view. In a book that drifted in and out of pre- depression era Saskatchewan to pre and post-war Ontario, some of the magic waned for me when Connie's story and her voice receded into the background and Anne's perspective became predominant. Connie's experiences in Jewel with the freakish Parley Burns, Michael her dyslexic student and the tragic ingenue, Susan was some of the best writing I have ever read topped off with a disturbing and tragic plot. The parallel story of the young girl's murder in Argyll, Ontario presented itself as an excellent mystery that did not resolve satisfactorily in my mind. Connie's suspicions were raised to be sure but her interest in figuring out the answer to this mystery just kind of disappeared. After Connie's move to Boston and with Anne's perspective now in the forefront, the book lost its magic for me. The latter part of the book focusing on Anne's self-absorbed recollections and her creepy hook-up with the much older and also part-time lover of her aunt, Michael left me disappointed as did the fact that the question of little Ethel's murder and the role Parley Burns may or may not have played in it was never answered. A writer as good as Elizabeth Hay, even if the story falls a bit short, is still worth the read however.
November 26, 2014
I totally didn't get the point of this book. I was enjoying the first half or so well enough, with the mystery of Ethel laid out, Connie in the schoolhouse in Saskatchewan and Parley and Michael and then OMG what happened to Susan, and it's hinted that somehow all this history is going to come together and build to revelations that, if not shocking, might be enriching, or surprising, or lend new perspectives to some of the characters. And then the book just meanders off into complete repetetive drivel, a pointless memoir that goes nowhere, the lens refocused on the narrator, who finally emerges from the telling of the exciting backstory of Connie's life to add her own pathetic, extended postscript and reflections on her mother's relationship with her grandparents and blah blah blah. It lost all of its mysterious, mythical, epic qualities and became a complete slog and A book that started with a lot of promise, and I held out until the end, hoping it would improve and go back to being the book I was enjoying initially. Two stars for a solid start, solid enough that I struggled through the rest of it, which was remarkably dull.
October 17, 2015
This novel was beautifully written from beginning to end -- and I expected to rate it with full stars. Although the prose is beautiful -- the plot felt increasingly fragmented as the focus widened from the relationship between Connie and Burns to Connie and Michael, Connie and Syd, Connie and her niece, Connie and her parents. All stories were interesting, but the length of the novel did not afford tackling several narratives in the depth they deserved in only a single volume. The last third of the novel felt like the beginning of a new novel rather than a denouement to the established storylines. I'm thinking that the storylines would have been better served in two volumes, like Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and Lila. However it's worth reading for its atmospheric qualities, sense of place and for at least one life lesson -- to maintain a healthy skepticism in one's personal perceptions of others. Ironic that the man Connie chose to distrust and despise turned out -- in some respects -- to be a more stable and trustworthy man than the one she loved. The title character, Connie, is indeed left "alone in the classroom" -- the literal one in which she taught and in the metaphoric classroom of life.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 16, 2011
The lens which Elizabeth Hay turned on Yellowknife in Late Nights on Air is turned to Saskatchewan in this far reaching story of families and the complexities of relationships. The Ottawa Valley is also a major character. The story goes back and forth from the past to the present and it covers a period of time from the 1920s to the present. It's for me an entirely different story from Late Nights on Air, though I would agree that the themes are similar. Beautifully told, I could see the country lane where the young girl who goes missing in the first chapter went picking chokeberries. Elizabeth Hay is another incredible Canadian author we need to celebrate.
June 27, 2018
I'm not sure how I missed this one. Elizabeth Hay is a favourite CanLit author.I found the multi-generational story quite complex- intriguing, occasionally confusing, but riveting. Unconventional women's lives are evocative of alternate paths available to all, though chosen by only a brave few.
May 18, 2014
In the silence of a rural classroom a story unfolds. It is a story of tragedy and loss; a story that examines human nature, love, hate and so much more.
Connie's niece, Anne narrates the story. This was confusing for me at times, as much of the story is about Connie's past. Considering this, I think the impact would have been greater if narrated by Connie. Also, I wanted to know much more about certain characters such as Michael and Syd. The characters were developed enough, however at times I felt like I was observing them from a distance. But overall these are minor observations.
Hay truly is a talented writer and I appreciate her ability to take several story-lines and weave them together creating an intricate plot. Her prose is magical. As the words lift off the page and take flight, a formation of vibrant images begin to materialize. Images so sharp that they reside in my thoughts long after the book has been closed.
Connie's niece, Anne narrates the story. This was confusing for me at times, as much of the story is about Connie's past. Considering this, I think the impact would have been greater if narrated by Connie. Also, I wanted to know much more about certain characters such as Michael and Syd. The characters were developed enough, however at times I felt like I was observing them from a distance. But overall these are minor observations.
Hay truly is a talented writer and I appreciate her ability to take several story-lines and weave them together creating an intricate plot. Her prose is magical. As the words lift off the page and take flight, a formation of vibrant images begin to materialize. Images so sharp that they reside in my thoughts long after the book has been closed.
November 3, 2011
I read this book because it was chosen for my bookclub and I have mix feelings about it; I did not love it, nor hate it. At the beginning, I couldn't for the life of me figure out who was telling the story, I found myself re-reading pages quite often; and thought there were too many innuendos. With that said, the characters and plot was developed nicely. It just one of those books you have to peruse through, or you will miss everything!
April 26, 2020
Last fall (2019) I “discovered� the author, Elizabeth Hay, so I’m going back to some of her older novels. It’s such a treat to find wonderful novelists with an existing catalogue of treats and wonders.
“Alone in the Classroom� was first published in 2011, and it is a mesmerizing novel; a mystery, an unconventional love story, and a perfect escape during this time of COVID 19 stress.
What has drawn me again to Hay is her wonderful prose. Let me just give one example of a description that merits high appreciation; in describing an upholstered armchair she writes that is was: “the most uncomfortable furniture imaginable, the seats so deep your spine has to go on a journey and arrives sorry it ever got there.�
No wonder she’s considered a national treasure in her home country of Canada!
“Alone in the Classroom� was first published in 2011, and it is a mesmerizing novel; a mystery, an unconventional love story, and a perfect escape during this time of COVID 19 stress.
What has drawn me again to Hay is her wonderful prose. Let me just give one example of a description that merits high appreciation; in describing an upholstered armchair she writes that is was: “the most uncomfortable furniture imaginable, the seats so deep your spine has to go on a journey and arrives sorry it ever got there.�
No wonder she’s considered a national treasure in her home country of Canada!
June 14, 2012
McClelland & Stewart|April 10, 2012|Trade Paperback|ISBN: 978-0-7710-3797-9
Story Description:
Elizabeth Hay’s highly acclaimed, national bestseller now in a deluxe paperback edition.
Hay’s runaway bestseller novel crosses generations and cuts to the bone of universal truth about love and our relationship with the past. In 1930, a school principal in Saskatchewan is suspected of abusing a student. Seven years later on the other side of the country, a girl picking wild cherries meets a violent end. These are only two of the mysteries in the life of the narrator’s charismatic aunt, Connie Flood.
As the narrator Anne pieces together her aunt’s lifelong attachment to her former student Michael Graves, and her obsession with Parley Burns, the inscrutable principal implicated in the assault of Michael’s younger sister, her own story becomes connected with that of the past, and the triangle of principal, teacher, student opens out into other emotional triangles � aunt, niece, lover, mother, daughter, granddaughter � until a sudden, capsizing love changes Anne’s life. Alone in the Classroom is Elizabeth Hay’s most tense, intricate, and seductive novel yet.
My Review:
Hmm�.what to say about this book. I’m not really sure I enjoyed it all that much, I think being nosy more than anything is what kept me reading until the end rather the story itself. I was more interested in finding out the ending to this Parley Burns character who I absolutely despised. I just wanted, wished, needed this man to meet a fateful end and kept reading for that reason alone. I found the story quite mundane and slow going and not all that interesting and don’t understand all the hype I heard about this novel. This is the second Elizabeth Hay novel I’ve read and had difficulty reading both so I think I’m done with this author.
Perhaps you will enjoy it and think it to be the greatest the story ever. All I can say is “to each his own.�
Story Description:
Elizabeth Hay’s highly acclaimed, national bestseller now in a deluxe paperback edition.
Hay’s runaway bestseller novel crosses generations and cuts to the bone of universal truth about love and our relationship with the past. In 1930, a school principal in Saskatchewan is suspected of abusing a student. Seven years later on the other side of the country, a girl picking wild cherries meets a violent end. These are only two of the mysteries in the life of the narrator’s charismatic aunt, Connie Flood.
As the narrator Anne pieces together her aunt’s lifelong attachment to her former student Michael Graves, and her obsession with Parley Burns, the inscrutable principal implicated in the assault of Michael’s younger sister, her own story becomes connected with that of the past, and the triangle of principal, teacher, student opens out into other emotional triangles � aunt, niece, lover, mother, daughter, granddaughter � until a sudden, capsizing love changes Anne’s life. Alone in the Classroom is Elizabeth Hay’s most tense, intricate, and seductive novel yet.
My Review:
Hmm�.what to say about this book. I’m not really sure I enjoyed it all that much, I think being nosy more than anything is what kept me reading until the end rather the story itself. I was more interested in finding out the ending to this Parley Burns character who I absolutely despised. I just wanted, wished, needed this man to meet a fateful end and kept reading for that reason alone. I found the story quite mundane and slow going and not all that interesting and don’t understand all the hype I heard about this novel. This is the second Elizabeth Hay novel I’ve read and had difficulty reading both so I think I’m done with this author.
Perhaps you will enjoy it and think it to be the greatest the story ever. All I can say is “to each his own.�
March 7, 2012
The plot involves a schoolgirl murdered in the Upper Ottawa Valley during the 1940s, another one who died in a fire in Saskatchewan years earlier, the creepy, sadistic principal linked to both girls, and the teacher who brings these stories together and tells them to her niece Annie, the narrator.
At times the structure is confusing since the narrative meanders back and forth in both time and place. This structure, however, suggests the process of learning, a slow discovery of truths as we progress through life's classrooms.
The book is a study of three characters whose lives are interconnected: Connie Flood, the beloved and admired aunt of the narrator; Parley Burns, the troubled and troubling principal; and Michael Graves, the dyslexic student whom Connie tutors and loves.
Sometimes the reader's credulity is strained by the main characters meeting and re-meeting in different times and places, but these seeming coincidences are foreshadowed and so intentional: Hay suggests that there is perhaps a hidden symmetry that guides our lives.
Annie represents the human desire to understand the stories, experiences and people that shape individual lives and the lives of those who come after them: ". . . we carry the past forward even when things and people are obliterated" (246). She learns that our patterns of learning set the patterns of our lives: "Everything you learn blurs and merges and contributes to a way of seeing the world" (275).
This is a novel that is worth re-reading. There is so much in it to ponder (e.g. education and learning, the myriad connections between past, present and future) that one reading is insufficient.
At times the structure is confusing since the narrative meanders back and forth in both time and place. This structure, however, suggests the process of learning, a slow discovery of truths as we progress through life's classrooms.
The book is a study of three characters whose lives are interconnected: Connie Flood, the beloved and admired aunt of the narrator; Parley Burns, the troubled and troubling principal; and Michael Graves, the dyslexic student whom Connie tutors and loves.
Sometimes the reader's credulity is strained by the main characters meeting and re-meeting in different times and places, but these seeming coincidences are foreshadowed and so intentional: Hay suggests that there is perhaps a hidden symmetry that guides our lives.
Annie represents the human desire to understand the stories, experiences and people that shape individual lives and the lives of those who come after them: ". . . we carry the past forward even when things and people are obliterated" (246). She learns that our patterns of learning set the patterns of our lives: "Everything you learn blurs and merges and contributes to a way of seeing the world" (275).
This is a novel that is worth re-reading. There is so much in it to ponder (e.g. education and learning, the myriad connections between past, present and future) that one reading is insufficient.
December 31, 2012
This beautifully written novel, set in Saskatchewan and the Ottawa Valley, focuses on a young schoolteacher, Connie Flood, a backward student, Michael, whom she tries to help, and Parley Burns, the principal, who casts a dark shadow over all who come under his influence. The story begins with a murder, and unfolds both in the present, with the adult Anne trying to make sense of her aunt's story, and in the past, in the early days of Connie's tenure at the small rural school.
It's not a novel for the faint-hearted. It has its share of damaged characters and heart-breaking situations. The writer gives us a keen insight into her cast's moral dilemmas, and each one of them comes across as a real individual, believable in his or her flaws. Much of the story is in Connie's point of view, but as the novel develops Anne finds herself drawn into the web of intense relationships that lies at this story's heart.
The writing is spare and beautiful, evoking the physical settings of the story wonderfully in few words. Here's a sample:
'A deer came out of the bush. Hardly a sound. It was there, tawny pose and wet eyes. They absorbed each other's attention. Ethel moved closer. Around them was birdsong, breezes. One small branch of a leaning maple showed the first touch of red.
Early August. The jewelweed was in blossom, tomatoes were ripening, the morning became increasingly hot. Summer held. But school was in the air. Every child felt it. She was aware of precious time running out.'
As one reviewer said, 'To be read slowly, or even better, read twice.' Alone in the Classroom would make an excellent book club choice.
It's not a novel for the faint-hearted. It has its share of damaged characters and heart-breaking situations. The writer gives us a keen insight into her cast's moral dilemmas, and each one of them comes across as a real individual, believable in his or her flaws. Much of the story is in Connie's point of view, but as the novel develops Anne finds herself drawn into the web of intense relationships that lies at this story's heart.
The writing is spare and beautiful, evoking the physical settings of the story wonderfully in few words. Here's a sample:
'A deer came out of the bush. Hardly a sound. It was there, tawny pose and wet eyes. They absorbed each other's attention. Ethel moved closer. Around them was birdsong, breezes. One small branch of a leaning maple showed the first touch of red.
Early August. The jewelweed was in blossom, tomatoes were ripening, the morning became increasingly hot. Summer held. But school was in the air. Every child felt it. She was aware of precious time running out.'
As one reviewer said, 'To be read slowly, or even better, read twice.' Alone in the Classroom would make an excellent book club choice.
July 10, 2017
Connie was a teacher in small town Saskatchewan where she encountered Parley Burns, the school principal who was an unsettling man. A young girl dies in a fire after an encounter with him, never specified but certainly implied, and Connie leaves the Prairies to become a reporter in the Ottawa Valley eventually, covering a murder of a young woman and this is where she encounters Burns again. The two deaths are not related. She also meets up again with a former student, Michael Graves, who was struggling with dyslexia (though it wasn’t a known “thing� at the time the book is set, the 1930s).
The book is narrated by Connie’s admiring niece, Anne and that narration kind of makes the book feel like it was at arms� length from me.
I found the book a bit disjointed, or disconnected for some reason. It didn’t seem to flow very well. One review on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ that I read called it the “Sisterhood of the Travelling Boyfriendâ€� which made me snicker. That’s related to the former student, Michael Graves, I think. I’ve read other reviews that talk about it in glowing terms, with all these subtle meanings and talk of a great romantic triangle which, if you ask me, feels more than a bit dysfunctional. did I say that Anne *really* admires her aunt? She goes to great lengths to be like her and came across a bit needy.
There are examinations of relationships between siblings, parents and children, lovers and friends. It’s very well written but I didn’t connect with it and likely that’s up to me. It won’t put me off reading more of Ms. Hay’s books, though.
The book is narrated by Connie’s admiring niece, Anne and that narration kind of makes the book feel like it was at arms� length from me.
I found the book a bit disjointed, or disconnected for some reason. It didn’t seem to flow very well. One review on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ that I read called it the “Sisterhood of the Travelling Boyfriendâ€� which made me snicker. That’s related to the former student, Michael Graves, I think. I’ve read other reviews that talk about it in glowing terms, with all these subtle meanings and talk of a great romantic triangle which, if you ask me, feels more than a bit dysfunctional. did I say that Anne *really* admires her aunt? She goes to great lengths to be like her and came across a bit needy.
There are examinations of relationships between siblings, parents and children, lovers and friends. It’s very well written but I didn’t connect with it and likely that’s up to me. It won’t put me off reading more of Ms. Hay’s books, though.
July 12, 2011
What an interesting novel! Set in Saskatchewan and the Ottawa Valley, this story goes back and forth in time from 1929 to present day. The narrator of the story is Anne Elizabeth. Anne is the niece of Connie Flood, the main character in this story. Author Elizabeth Hay, through the character of Anne, introduces the reader to many wonderfully well developed personalities like Michael Graves, Parley Burns and Syd Goodwin. Through Anne’s research on her Aunt Connie, we become involved in all of these characters� lives. And these lives become woven together over time as we meet principals, teachers and students who are also aunts, nieces, lovers, mothers, daughters and granddaughters. Anne admits, toward the end of this seductive novel, that she tried to write about her mother (Connie’s brother’s wife) but had great difficulty doing so until she “came at it sideways, through the story of Parley Burns, which lead her to Connie and Michael�.
Canadian Author Elizabeth Hay first came to my attention when she won praise for writing “Late Nights on Air�. My friend recommended “Late Nights on Air� to me and I had placed it on my to read list. When “Alone in the Classroom� fell into my hands, I recognized the author’s name and had to read it. I was not disappointed. Now I have to run out and buy “Late Nights on Air�!!
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