Alone in the Classroom

By Elizabeth Hay

The highly acclaimed and nationally bestselling novel from Elizabeth Hay.

Hay's runaway bestseller novel crosses generations and cuts to the bone of universal truth about love and our relationship with the past. In 1930, a school principal in Saskatchewan is suspected of abusing a student. Seven years later, on the other side of the country, a girl picking wild cherries meets a violent end. These are only two of the mysteries in the life of the narrator's charismatic aunt, Connie Flood.
 
As the narrator Anne pieces together her aunt's lifelong attachment to her former student Michael Graves, and her obsession with Parley Burns, the inscrutable principal implicated in the assault of Michael's younger sister, her own story becomes connected with that of the past, and the triangle of principal, teacher, student opens out into other emotional triangles—aunt, niece, lover; mother, daughter, granddaughter—until a sudden, capsizing love changes Anne's life. Alone in the Classroom is Elizabeth Hay's most tense, intricate, and seductive novel yet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Apr 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9780771037993

Reviews for Alone in the Classroom

[jbarringer-2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is actually lovely, if taken slowly, in small doses, not as a novel, but simply as a rambling fictional memoir about the good old days, with tales of a few sexually irresistable men and a few women who are easily swayed by such men. I really liked that the central female characters in this book are able to be sexual without it being a huge moral issue; in this sense this is a rather modern novel, and it is at least as well written as many classics that are still regularly read and reprinted. There is also some lovely writing in this story, quotable and thought provoking.

But, as a coherent novel this one is unsatisfyingly unfocused and unresolved. There really isn't a central plot, just characters and events strung together haphazardly. Things do certainly happen, but we never find out whether Parsey raped Susan, or who raped and killed Ethel. We never learn who caused the fire the destroyed the Gravess' house, either. There are so many characters to keep track of, too, from several generations, in a very jumbled timeline, that it is exhausting and offputting trying to keep track of what is going on from one chapter to the next. I'm someone who can easily keep track of all the characters in a huge saga like the Wheel of Time series, and I was having a terrible time remembering the family tree for the primary character groups and keeping track of who knows who and who sleeps with whom.

If what you want is something nice to read a few pages at a time before bed, not for plots and action, but simply to ease the way into sleep, this book may be an excellent choice, and as a piece of literature to read in academic settings this might be an interesting choice, but it is not one of my favorite novels for sure.

[dameco_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Let me start by saying that I love Elizabeth Hay's writing and was really looking forward to this book. However, I was most disappointed with it. I found the plot lines incomplete and many of the characters sketchy. At the end, the narrator (Annie) says she wanted to record the story as a means of getting to know and understand her mother. Throughout the book, I could not get even a clear picture of which character was her mother! I found the first half of the book quite promising and then the book veered off into splintered plot lines, introduced characters with little reference to their relevancy to the first part of the book and quite frankly dragged. I found myself asking, who is this again? I never developed a rapport for the characters prominent in the second half of the book and the most interesting elements of the storyline were dropped. This book struck me as published prematurely and somewhat rushed, almost as if Ms. Hay was being pressured by her publisher to produce another book. It was as if she had the seeds of a couple of books and they were cobbled together without the tightly woven plot and well-drawn characterization of her previous works. I will definitely read her again but could not recommend this book at all.

[scrabblenut · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Alone in the Classroom is a beautifully written book with memorable characters and much to think about regarding our perceptions of other people. What we think of as reality may have other interpretations. The slightly creepy principal and the young inexperienced teacher with the dyslexic older pupil are wonderfully drawn. The murder in the book, with its young suspect, seemed derivative of the Stephen Truscott case, but added another layer to the suspicions that Connie had about her old principal, Parley Burns. This books leaves you contemplating all the characters long after you finish the story.

[elizajane_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reason for Reading: I've been interested in reading this author for a while now and haven't got around to it yet. The early 1930's and the Saskatchewan setting pulled me into starting off with her latest book.An excellent book! Though a hard one to describe. The plot has many layers and is meandering to the point where it is not exactly what drives the book. The book is most certainly character driven and the relationships between these characters are what propels the story along. The story covers the time period from 1929 to 2008 and focuses on one Connie Flood, a school teacher, journalist, traveler; a woman of independence who takes lovers as she wants them and lives life to its fullest according to her small needs though she has a large presence. The book is told from the point of view of Connie's niece, who is telling the story from the first person, looking back telling a tale of which she is omniscient from each individual character's thoughts and feelings. This pov was hard to get used to, I must admit. The narrator only appears in the beginnings of the story a few times and when the word "I" is used I found it confusing to remember that "I" was not Connie but the narrator, Anne. This becomes more clear a little over half way through the book when Anne actually becomes a character in the story but then the flipping from near past to far past with this continued point of view still felt unusual to me. Now, it's not that I was totally annoyed with the pov, it was just hard to remember who was telling the tale, and it did slow down my reading speed.The characters and their relationships, mostly triangles, are what make this book such an enticing, intense read. First of all, the element that brings all the persons together and moves the plot along is the brutal, unrelated, deaths of two young girls some years apart. The same character's are around at these times and this is what sets Anne off into investigating her aunt's past, perhaps to solve an unsolved crime. I've discussed Connie and Anne, but also there are two men to round out the main characters. Parley Burns, school teacher, principal, refined, detached, strict, perhaps mentally unstable, who has feelings for Connie. Secondly Michael, an older student at the school, not much younger than Connie herself who is slow and ridiculed as such; he is what would have been called dyslexic in the future, but not mentally challenged at all, and Connie takes a shine to him in trying to teach him to read. In fact, they take a shine to each other. The triangles that shape the book are principal, teacher, student then later on husband, wife and lover, a chance meeting turns us to aunt, niece, lover and in the background there is even grandmother, mother, daughter to overcome in the end.A wonderfully written book, I enjoyed tremendously with characters that will remain with me, especially Parley and Michael; but a slow-paced meandering read that will take your attention to appreciate fully.

[ajbraithwaite_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really liked the first half of this book but found that it dragged somewhat in the second. I think this was because the character of Connie was more sympathetic than that of Anne and because the story left me feeling slightly unsatisfied at the end. I did love the descriptions of the countryside, animals and birds, which were wonderful, but I never felt very clear about the various members of Anne's family and their relationships to each other, with the exception of her aunt, Connie.

[roxyrolla · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Excellent writing, somewhat interesting plot, left me annoyed at the end. I was waiting for something big to happen, and it never did, and I wonder what's the point.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If an author can write, I mean really write, then I'm willing to read pretty much anything they care to put out there. Elizabeth Hay can write. It's an odd writing style, one which features both worn-out phrases and metaphors so startling that you have to read them a few times, both for comprehension and for the sheer enjoyment of the pictures she paints. For a while I was able to carry it all inside me, like a big bouquet of peonies, and then I couldn't anymore. The moist, plump peony heads got to be too heavy. They were like pounds of raw hamburger hanging upside down.The book concerns Connie, a brand new and very young teacher sent to a small Saskatchewan school in a farming community at the brink of the Great Depression. There, she tutors an older boy who can't read and is menaced in vague and uncomfortable ways by the school's principal. Her story is told by her niece, a woman who worships the strong, independent woman Connie later became and who has an unsatisfactory relationship with her own mother. The first part of the book is perfect; an interesting story beautifully told and with a strong sense of the isolated prairie community. The book loses momentum as it continues on, so that the final chapters seem to be just treading water. However, Hay is such an accomplished writer that I found it pleasant enough to float around with her through those final chapters.

[randymetcalfe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sometimes the characters a writer pursues take on a seeming life of their own, wresting control of a tale from the hand that holds the pen. In Alone in the Classroom, the narrator, Anne, sets out to write about her mother but gets diverted into the lives of her father's older sister, Connie, an unsettling sexual predator named Parley, a traumatized dyslexic boy named Michael, and the disturbing events that tie them together over the course of more than sixty years. Anne's mother still appears but she has become a minor character, and ultimately what sets out as biography reveals itself as autobiography. Or maybe that is always the case in some respect. And, if so, does it have its analog in fiction? Has Elizabeth Hay, herself, suffered the same befuddling as her narrator? Certainly the results here appear jumbled, moving forward (or back) in fits and starts. What appears to be the centre of the story collapses or suddenly shifts out of sight. As the details begin to emerge, connections between characters become clearer but their significance is obscured. And what you are left with is the muddled mess of lives lived. Only a writer with the expressive power and observational talent of a fine poet could turn such a muddle into a compelling narrative. A writer like Elizabeth Hay.The story turns on the relationship between Connie, who is 18 in her first teaching post in a small town in Saskatchewan, her sadistic and frighteningly self-absorbed school principal, Parley, and the severely dyslexic (at the time dyslexia is not a recognized condition) student, Michael, who is, in Connie's eyes, clearly intelligent and sensitive. Both in this initial encounter and when Connie crosses paths with Parley again eight years later, Connie's strength and Parley's weakness are revealed. But the tripartite construction continues to re-emerge again and again, in different forms and often with different participants. What does it all mean? For Anne, the narrator imposing narrative order on disordered lives, its significance is rich. But Anne's need for order is just a further hue for Hay's palette, so the meaning for the reader remains open.Writing that so faithfully brings its characters to life, escaping the simplifying tendency of art will, I think, naturally be at times confusing. At least I was confused at times. Certainly this writing forces the reader to slow down, to work things out, to make connections, even to reread sections. (I wanted to reread the book from the start numerous times as I went along, realizing that I had missed vital aspects on my first pass.) It's like the difference between reading a longhand letter from a dear friend and a scrabbled email; the former gives you pause, gladly. Elizabeth Hay's writing gives me pause. Highly recommended.

[mahallett · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

as always when listening i get characters mixed up. reader mispronounced kazabazua. good story

[oldblack-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In terms of my likes & dislike, this book starts off slowly and finishes with a bang. More erudite readers and reviewers have said the opposite. The last half-dozen chapters would be my favourites, and I found the first few to be a bit of a struggle. I think that's because Hay is setting up a rather intricate set of relationships (and relations). My map of the character connections had to be redrawn once (but I'm not too quick on the uptake). I did find some of the coincidences (people meeting again in different places after a long period) to be a little unbelievable and I suppose the most unbelievable part of all was Connie and Anne both having a relationship with the one man. Notwithstanding those difficulties, this book still nudged into the 4-star zone for me because of the particular insights shown into human behaviour....and by reflection, into my own behaviour and life story.

[timbazzett · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's not all that often anymore that I want, more than anything else, to start a review with "I LOVED this book!" or my other stock response, "Holy CRAP, this man/woman can write!" Well, consider both responses rendered for Elizabeth Hay's ALONE IN THE CLASSROOM. Because this is simply an outstandingly beautiful and profoundly satisfying book.A multi-generational story spanning most of the twentieth century, Hay's story of the Flood and Soper families contains none of the tedium or stock sensationalism that often characterizes so many of the so-called 'sweeping family sagas' that I usually run screaming from, but women seem to love - think Danielle Steele or Belva Plain, for example. Nope. Hay's people are real, believable, utterly human. The narrator is Anne Flood, but the heroine, at least for the first half or more of the book is her aunt, Connie Flood, a strong and independent character who Anne has admired her whole life. And there is a 'villain' in Ian 'Parley' Burns, who is certainly evil, but also tortured, thwarted and pathetic. There are strong admirable male characters too, in Sid Goodwin and Michael Graves. But they too have their all-too-human flaws, as does the narrator Anne.The story turns on a couple of violent crimes, separated by many years, and Parley Burns figures into both. Both Connie and Anne are intricately caught up in the histories of Burns and, later, the attractive and artistically talented dyslexic, Michael Graves. Connie, a schoolteacher turned journalist, and Anne, a schoolteacher and writer, form a strange triagle with Michael, a plot which forms the heart of the novel. But this is also a story about personal histories and confusing and tragic family relationships, particularly the ones between mothers and daughters. Here's a sample -"Connie indulged Michael the way mothers indulge their sons, so I've come to believe. The mothers can't help it. And the reverse is true. Daughters quicken a mother's critical faculties. None of this is deliberate or thought out - it's on the level of the physical. And so sons bask. And daughters fume. And women brood. And men move on. And yet they don't move on either."Hay is also expert in evoking a feeling one can remember from childhood, like this one about the importance of the Sunday funnies -"Newspapers of old smelled damp, inky, pungent. We would lie on the floor when we were kids, our noses inches above the paper, and devour the comic strips that were so glamorous in those days, the women and the men bewitching, all chiselled cheekbones and thick hair, full lips and swelling breasts. The damp wonder of sex and romance, and the excitement of the world out there awaiting us - it was all transmitted directly into our noses through newsprint and ink."YES, Elizabeth! I remember it too - sprawled on our living room floor checking out the latest installments of "Li'l Abner", "Rex Morgan, M.D.", "Terry and the Pirates", "Steve Canyon", and so many other now nearly forgotten comic strips. I dont' want to sound sexist, but ALONE IN THE CLASSROOM is a book only a woman could have written. Men, I think, simply lack the sensibility needed to write this way. The erotic tensions and undercurrents of fear and sexual vulnerability are almost palpable, yet as delicately nuanced as a Japanese watercolor. This is simply fine writing. I tried, nearly in vain, to think of anything else I've read that might compare to this book. The only one I could think of was, coincidentally, another Canadian novel, Anne-Marie MacDonald's THE WAY THE CROW FLIES, an enormous tome I enjoyed tremendously some years back. So yeah. Holy crap, even. I loved this book. My advice? READ it!

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Well written with intriguing characters. Like several other reviewers, I didn't get a good sense of the narrator and her motivations. I liked the story of Connie and Michael, and the character of Parley Burns, but I don't think the overall story did them justice. First, it was narrated by someone who wasn't an active participant in the events. Second, the relationship between Connie and the narrator was a tad unbelievable, given their respective feelings for Michael. So, the characters, in my opinion, deserved a better telling of t heir stories.That being said, I'm glad I read this book.

[emmee1000 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This would be rated much higher if I could have decided which of the characters was the protagonist. Hay does some lovely writing, but there is a kind of disconnect throughout. Still, it's worth a read.

[ldvoorberg · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Rather pastoral, with so much nature in the descriptions. Meanders a bit, not everything is nearly chronological or nearly laid out. Yet the disconnects are artful in how they pick up and drop off, what is said and unsaid. Not a book to pick and put down often, or one could lose the thread and names or events that weave through the story. Is it about Connie, the aunt? Parley Burns, the pervert principal? Michael, the student with dyslexia? Or the narrator, Anne Elizabeth? (And is this based on reality or pure fiction?)