God. It's depressing. The inner workings of a headmaster's brain. His wife dies, the school falls apart. Damn.

Terrific story set in a New England boarding school 40 years ago, but very relevant to today … energy awareness, adolescent drug use, aggressive sport parents. Clever format … all letters from main protagonist to a variety of personal and professional constituents.

Beautiful but impossibly sad

Never a fan of epistolary novels, I was nevertheless entranced by Hawley's accomplishment. Like many of the author's reader-correspondents, I found myself bemused by the novel's conclusion, but utterly transported by the elegance, grace, humor, and virtue of the writing.

I read this 27 years ago and it still haunts me. Written in letters, it is the story of a headmaster, his dying wife and his missing son. One of my all-time favorite books.

A quiet, perfect little book. Heartbreakingly beautiful.

I've read it twice. Outstanding work by an author who knows what he writes about. Richard Hawley is a seasoned professional educator- unlike too many authors who choose prep schools for their setting.
I've been a school head too, and so I can vouch for the authenticity of this wonderful book.

This was the telling of the story of a headmaster of a boy's school in New England, entirely through his letters and papers. I'm afraid I am not a fan of the format, at least of how it was executed by the author. There was a singular lack of dramatic tension, and I had a difficult time motivating myself to keep reading. Basically, it was a written portrait of a character. The character of the headmaster is basically likable. I might even say that I might have liked being in his school when I was in high school. However, the theme of the book was basically, "Wasn't education so much better in the good old days when youth were taught good old fashioned values?" There is certainly truth in that. However, it is not enough of a theme to sustain a novel.

Interesting approach to telling the story

A quiet epistolary novel about a Head of School who simply hasn't kept up with the times or with how the school has changed over the 30 years he's been Head. Over the years I've met faculty and administrators who are, to one degree or another, like Greeve (and seriously, that name? hmmmm....), so many parts rang very true to me.

I had to read this for school, and I wasn't sure what to expect. It certainly touched on life at school -I was saddened by the troubles of the headmaster and frustrated by the lack of support demonstrated through the letters. See, it felt like a real headmaster, real problems, real school! The format of the letters was really successful in conveying not only the voice of the headmaster but also the plot of the book. One warning -the introduction in my version by John Irving gave away a big part of the ending.

An epistolary novel, these letters and memoranda sent by John Greeve, headmaster at Wells, a small private boys’ school in Connecticut, show how the orderly, school- and family-rich life of his past 30 years begin to disintegrate around him one awful year. Taking the news of his beloved wife’s fatal cancer with stoicism and realism, he is further rocked by the unnerving (though not wholly unexpected) disappearance and almost certain death of his wastrel son in Turkey, coinciding with several small-scale scandals at Wells. Setting impossibly high standards of rectitude for himself and others, with no small streak of the curmudgeonly conservative, he is politely appalled at what he sees as a decline to decadence all around him, evidenced by everything from the choice of music at a school function to LSD sales on school grounds. Greeve continues to fight for his school and his way of life, but it’s a losing battle.

Of course, one interesting aspect of epistolary novels is that we never see outside the mind of the man, so it’s hard to say how much is actually crumbling around him and how much is his frail psyche buckling under the strain. Either way, Greeve, curmudgeon though he is, sneering at the untidy hair of the youth and clucking at the ignorance of the Me and Now generations, is a highly sympathetic character. It’s a moving and deeply thought-provoking novel.

Powerful, intense and ultimately sad, Hawley will touch the nerves of anyone who attended or taught in boarding schools. He not only know the "world of our own," but describes it with elegance and simplicity. If he breaks your heart, it is because you know he is telling a fundamental truth that we all bear hidden in the back of our psyches. Few books have touched me so deeply.