The School by Ed Kelleher & Harriette Vidal

Have you ever started reading a book that was incredibly exciting, the story completely engaging you as the first hundred pages flew by, only to have it dry out and wither during the second half, your mind forced to continue out of sheer determination to finish rather than a desire to see what eventually unfolds? This pretty much sums up what happened to me with The School. I don’t know why, but the first half of the book absorbed me completely, my fascination with the strange school and the characters that were enrolled within pushing me forward. I enjoyed just about everything that unfolded during that part, the only exception being the seemingly insatiable drug and alcohol use by the girls at the Hanley School. Now, I am not ignorant to the fact that drug and alcohol use occurs with minors, and that no school, no matter how strict or how prominent, will have issues with such things, but to have just about every student consuming such things repeatedly . . . well that just didn’t ring true to me. At first, however, I was able to let this slide, my mind thinking the authors, like most adults looking at the latest generation of kids, probably read too much into the sensationalized incidents of such things that plague the media. But then the drug and alcohol use started to increase, the justification being that the evil school was driving the students to behave this way. Again, I could understand this. What I couldn’t understand was the need to beat the drug and alcohol use into the reader. Every couple of pages we were again brought into a scene where some of the female girls were mixing drinks, snorting cocaine, smoking ‘marijuana cigarettes’, or popping Quaaludes. Sometimes everything was mixed together too. It just got so old, and every time a scene like this began to unfold I wanted to reach across space and time to the authors as they worked on the manuscript and say, “Okay, I get it, the evil school has taken whatever addiction the girls suffer, or whatever fear they harbor, or whatever odd sexual tendency they have, and increased it to the breaking point, but instead of focusing on that over and over again can we get a layered reasoning of why the school is doing this?”

Reasoning did come eventually, but it was so cliché and so sudden, that it wasn’t worth the continued buildup that was seen in the ever increasing delinquent behavior of the students. Also unnecessary was the gradual shift of the drama teacher from a conservative and always modestly dressed young lady to sex crazed hooker-dressed individual. The explanation for this was that she had been chosen as the future caretaker of the Hanley School by the current Satan worshipping caretakers, both of whom knew the school had been built on ground chosen by Satan. Why Satan would chose a New England setting when for most of human history the area was unpopulated and therefore free of the mental destruction and blood it always craved was a mystery that went without explanation. Also unclear was why the story kept pointing toward a climax that would occur during the school play, one that had been written in 1931 by a student named Lisa King who then went on to murder the headmaster and the two students he was sleeping with after its opening night. All through the book it felt as if everything was pointing toward the opening night, and something that would occur with the leading lady who was also the main character of the story. But then, without warning, the drama teacher was brought down and forced to perform a sexual satanic ceremony that made her the new caretaker of the school the night before the play. Disgusted with herself, she jumped from the top of the school, at which point the leading lady, Vanessa, became Lisa King and went and killed the headmaster and the two girls he was sleeping with, just like Lisa King had done in the prologue. It was then told to readers that the drama teacher had been the chosen one, but that Vanessa had saved the day at the last minute by taking on the role of Lisa King and serving up the required blood. WHAT? If the drama teacher had been the chosen one all along then why was Vanessa seeing things all throughout the semester and always encouraged by her boyfriend Dennis (also a member of the satanic group) to stay until opening night? And why was opening night so important if everything was going to happen the day before. Had some odd and unforeseen circumstances forced the ceremony to be a day early then I would have accepted this, but in the eyes of the caretakers it appeared as if this was how everything had been planned out from the beginning.

All in all, despite how enjoyable and intriguing the first hundred pages were, this was not a very good read and one that I wouldn’t really recommend. It just wasn’t structured well, the misguided focus on the drug and alcohol use being at fault, as well as the sudden and out of place ending that occurred. The worst part of all, however, was how much potential there was within this novel. All the elements were there for a fantastic little horror story, but never got used, or, at least, they weren’t used properly. Of course my thoughts on the matter might not be shared with the majority out there, and I respect that. If anyone enjoyed this novel I would love to hear from them. Also, are their any novels by these two authors that you would recommend to me? I rarely ever give up on reading an author after just one book, and would love to hear some suggestions. If not I will probably just go with Madonna or The Breeder given that those are the only two titles I saw mentioned on the cover of The School.