A Good School is a novel by Richard Yates first published in 1978. It is set at a fictional Connecticut prep school in the early 1940s and relates the coming of age of a group of mainly WASP boys who at the same time prepare themselves, if half-heartedly, to go to war immediately after graduation. A Good School also delves into the complex private lives of some of the masters and their love-hate relationship to both their profession and the parti...
more
A Good School is a novel by Richard Yates first published in 1978. It is set at a fictional Connecticut prep school in the early 1940s and relates the coming of age of a group of mainly WASP boys who at the same time prepare themselves, if half-heartedly, to go to war immediately after graduation. A Good School also delves into the complex private lives of some of the masters and their love-hate relationship to both their profession and the particular school they are teaching at.
The school, modeled on Yates' own experiences as an adolescent at Avon Old Farms School, is called Dorset Academy, a small private institution dependent on its now senile founder, a wealthy older woman named Abigail Church Hooper. Dorset Academy is at best a second-rate institution, having the reputation of an unusual sort of prep school, where many of the students are on scholarship, and Dr. Stone, the English master, is the only "Harvard man". However, throughout the book, parents, teachers, even students...
less
