Review: The Teacher's Secret by Suzanne Leal

Terry Prichard is the much loved assistant principal at a country primary school. Well-respected by the staff and parents and loved by his students, he has carved out a successful career which comes to a very sudden halt after the temporary appointment of a new school principal. Suddenly, Terry has retired, no one knows why and his replacement Nina is not having the easiest time settling in at the school, or into her new life as a single mother. And these are not the only characters who have their own story to tell in this new release by Australian author Suzanne Leal. There is also Rebecca, who arrives in Australia halfway through the year, Mel, a young mother and Laurie herself, a woman driven by rules ... and an agenda.

I enjoyed reading this novel. In many ways, I found it reminiscent of The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas where every character has their own story and where blame is often a matter of perspective. The characters are flawed and make mistakes. Sometimes, though, Terry's innocence and willingness to do what he thinks is right with little thought to the possible consequences to his reputation, particularly when he knew that Laurie had a suspicious nature, was excruciating to read and at times had me wondering, is he or isn't he? On the other hand, it was overwhelmingly obvious how much the community, especially the kids, needed Terry and how lost many of them would have been without him. The secret (revealed at the end of the novel,) is completely befitting of the man and his personality--and if you look through the book and see the back story to one of the other characters, you'll see some very clever foreshadowing in there. Meanwhile, Nina's own life story tugged at my heartstrings--it's hard not to feel for a strong woman who finds her life ruined by a weak man (... and who bounces back.) It was also interesting the way that Nina's previous job was complicated by a certain outside factor (... of all the terrible coincidences!) I felt that the author could have given the reader more of an insight into Laurie, but perhaps that would have ruined the character and stopped her from being the antagonist of the piece.

Author Suzanne Leal offers a convincing glimpse into a small coastal town, where not all of her characters are perfect (or predictable) and where bad things can happen to good people. 

Recommended.

Thank you to Allen & Unwin for picking me a as winner on facebook and sending me a copy of The Teachers Secret. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Peppermint Patty: I Cried and Cried and Cried

Image
Unrequited love is a common theme in the Peanuts Comics and is one that I have previously explored on this blog. We know that Lucy loves Schroeder, Sally loves Linus and Charlie Brown has a crush on the unseen, unnamed and utterly unattainable Little Redhaired Girl. But perhaps the saddest unrequited love stories from the comic is that which ran in late June 1972. It was the series of strips where the usually self-confident Peppermint Patty came face-to-face with the Little Redhaired Girl with the intention of thumping her and then something surprising happened: Here we have a usually self-confident girl, who is funny, unashamedly herself and talented at sports reduced to tears by the realisation of who she is not and never can be. I really feel for her in this series of comic strips. She knows that Charlie Brown can never love her, when he is so hung up over a girl who represents a supposedly ideal feminine beauty. Fortunately Linus, the most spiritual member of the Pean
Read more

Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt and the Football

Image
One of the longest, and arguably, most infuriating, running gags in Charles Schulz's otherwise brilliant Peanuts comic strip, is where Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown and then pulls it away at the last minute, causing Charlie Brown to fall flat on his back. A typical strip looks like this: Source: Go Comics The gag is one of the darker themes in the strip. It works on the concept that every year, Lucy promises to hold a football for Charlie Brown. Every year, Charlie Brown is initially filled with doubt but is eventually pushed on by a kind of optimism that perhaps, this time, Lucy might just let him kick it after all. As a metaphor for life, it is pretty simple. It talks of the moments when we choose to put our trust in people who have let us down only to be taken by surprise when they let us down, again. Lucy is, arguably, one of the crueller characters in the comic. Described as crabby by the other characters, she is often selfish, takes delight in wilfully hu
Read more

Phrases and Idioms: Tickets on Himself

To have tickets on himself: (Australian slang.) To be conceited or vain. To have an overinflated opinion of oneself.  He's got tickets on himself if he thinks that any woman would fall for that. I was thinking about this particular bit of Australian slang the other day, after my boss said, "He's got tickets on himself," to describe the actions of a particular individual. At the time, I smiled, knowing exactly what the boss meant. Later on, I started to ponder on this unusual phrase and wondered where it might have come from. A search on google helped me find the definition, but that was about all. There are no references to it being used in pop culture or literature (if you find one, let me know,) and at the time of writing this post, Tickets on Himself was not listed on Urban Dictionary. (I tried to add it, but the fuckers rejected my definition. They probably think I have tickets on myself or something for trying to add a relatively common piece of A
Read more