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A review by rsinclair6536
His Favorites by Kate Walbert
4.0
In the 1980s, a 15-year old girl joy rides a golf cart on a golf course with two girlfriends. She wrecks it and one of the other girls sustains mortal injuries. The driver heads off to boarding school to avoid the hate visited on her and her family by an unforgiving community. For different reasons, her parents are simultaneously breaking up.
Most of the story occurs at the boarding school where the girl experiences hurtful and vengeful cliques, loneliness, sexual and intellectual awakening, remorse for her behavior that resulted in the accident, loss of her high school friend, and anxiety about her parents' split. Into that comes a predator English professor who easily seduces the girl in a most unpleasant way. She is merely one of many. In spite of his threats to her if she reveals his misdeeds, she reports the crime to the headmaster who downplays the events and tells her to just accept it. His wife underscores that advice in a separate encounter.
The narration skips time frames without warning, and the description of events is usually incomplete -- just glimpses of events, characters, and themes. This technique has been criticized, but I liked it. It is first person narration, and the scattered narration fits with a young girl who is grieving, injured, confused, and angry.
The book is a great meditation on the history of abuse of young women by means of a great, resonate case study. Of particular value is the character of the professor who uses his intelligence and experience to intoxicate the senses and intellect of the girl as part of the seduction. Men put many kinds of power to use against women.
Most of the story occurs at the boarding school where the girl experiences hurtful and vengeful cliques, loneliness, sexual and intellectual awakening, remorse for her behavior that resulted in the accident, loss of her high school friend, and anxiety about her parents' split. Into that comes a predator English professor who easily seduces the girl in a most unpleasant way. She is merely one of many. In spite of his threats to her if she reveals his misdeeds, she reports the crime to the headmaster who downplays the events and tells her to just accept it. His wife underscores that advice in a separate encounter.
The narration skips time frames without warning, and the description of events is usually incomplete -- just glimpses of events, characters, and themes. This technique has been criticized, but I liked it. It is first person narration, and the scattered narration fits with a young girl who is grieving, injured, confused, and angry.
The book is a great meditation on the history of abuse of young women by means of a great, resonate case study. Of particular value is the character of the professor who uses his intelligence and experience to intoxicate the senses and intellect of the girl as part of the seduction. Men put many kinds of power to use against women.