At Briarwood School for Girls: A Novel

By Michael Knight

It’s 1994 and Lenore Littlefield is a junior at Briarwood School for Girls. She plays basketball. She hates her roommate. History is her favorite subject. She has told no one that she’s pregnant. Everything, in other words, is under control.

Meanwhile, Disney has announced plans to build a new theme park just up the road, a “Technicolor simulacrum of American History” right in the middle of one of the most history-rich regions of the country. If successful, the development will forever alter the character of Prince William County, VA, and have unforeseeable consequences for the school.

When the threat of the theme park begins to intrude on the lives of the faculty and students at Briarwood, secrets will be revealed and unexpected alliances will form. Lenore must decide whom she can trust—will it be a middle-aged history teacher struggling to find purpose in his humdrum life? A lonely basketball coach tasked with directing the school play? A reclusive playwright still grappling with her own Briarwood legacy? Or a teenage ghost equally adept at communicating with the living via telephone or Ouija board?

Following a cast of memorable characters as they reckon with questions about fate, history, and the possibility of happiness, At Briarwood School for Girls is a stunning and inventive new work from a master storyteller.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• Release date: Apr 2, 2019
• ISBN: 9780802146304

Reviews for At Briarwood School for Girls

[dooney-2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There are certain anomalies surrounding the marketing descriptions of this book. Looking at it in the book store one might be intrigued by the ideas of ghosts, girls school, pregnant teenager, and even the historical backstory of Disney’s proposed American History related theme park, expecting a coming of age, YA, gothic confection of a story. And if this is the reader’s expectation, he or she may be surprised to find a literary novel which takes place in a girl’s school at a particular point in history, but which is really about the threads of history and how they shape and haunt our lives. Everyone in this story is haunted, often in ways they do not realize, both young and old, haunted by personal history, by the history of others, and how this history shapes day to day interactions without being understood, and even the larger forces, history of a place, of a culture. Michael Knight’s elegant spare prose and lack of sentimentality bring strength to this tale of how history flows around us, of a girl attempting to keep herself together, of the meeting of fears and expectations, and the way growth and change, often slip in when we aren’t really paying attention. I enjoyed this book intellectually, enjoyed reading it more the further I got into it, but in the end, this reader never found herself fully engaged with the characters. Hence only a three-star rating.

[hagelstein_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Michael Knight weaves together a girls boarding school in Virginia, a controversial Disney history park planned nearby, a school play, a seemingly reclusive playwright (author of the play and alumnus of the school), ghosts who make late-night telephone calls, and teen pregnancy. It all works.