The English Teacher

The English Teacher
By Lily King

This is Lily King’s first novel. The English Teacher is an insightful novel that details the struggles of Vida Avery, an English teacher at a small private school. Vida is a single mother of a fifteen-year-old boy, Peter, whose parentage she has never spoken of. Vida’s quiet and reclusive life is changed forever when she accepts the marriage proposal of a widower with three children.

When Peter and Vida are suddenly thrown together into a larger family their own sense of themselves as a family in their own right is destroyed. Vida is seemingly unprepared for the emotional intimacy of marriage and is unable to cope with her new husband’s expectations of her. She withdraws from Peter and her husband, starts drinking heavily, and her life begins to echo the novel she is teaching to her students – Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

This is a suspenseful and perceptive novel, all the more impressive because it is King’s first. I see from the dust jacket that she’s written another novel called “The Pleasing Hour”, which I will absolutely be adding to my reading list.