The Headmaster Ritual

by Taylor Antrim

Book Overview

Taylor Antrim's novel is a darkly comic, clear-eyed look at hidden worlds whose complexities and rules can be understood only from inside: the insular hothouse of boarding school, the thorny dynamics between father and son, and the self-delusion of blind ideological commitment.

Dyer Martin, a new history teacher at the prestigious Britton School, arrives in the fall ready to close the door on the failures and disappointments of his past: a...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0618756825
• ISBN13: 9780618756827
• Release Date: June 2007
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.6" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

The negative reviews are bizarre

I picked this up at the library and read it over 4 days. It's an entertaining story that alternates between a young teacher in a prep school and the son of the headmaster as they cope with the pressures of prep school life and of the radical headmaster. There's nothing particularly deep about it, but the writing is not bad and I had only good feelings about reading it. It's not really a 5 star book, but it's closer to 5 than 4 in my estimation, at least compared to most books I come across. I don't really understand the negative reviews -- folks seem ticked off at how the book was marketed, which is really odd. (It isn't as though the author normally has any control over that.) The book certainly isn't in the same league as "A Separate Peace", but it's a good debut novel.

A fine novel that just happens to be set at a prep school. . .

I can't understand some of the negative reviews here. True, like many excellent novels, The Headmaster Ritual takes some time to get into. But once you do, the rewards are ample. Instead of exploring the potentially lurid social life of prep school students and teachers, Antrim opens a window into their inner-lives and humanity and the personal struggles that fuel their feelings. This is deftly wrapped into a somewhat zany Tom Wolfe-esque plot involving of all things--the international politics of North Korea. Antrim writes with subtlety and restraint, never reaching for too much in a scene. His characters and action are always believable, and he avoids the sensational and gratuitous. This is an ambitious novel written with a masterly touch. If you give it time, you'll come to know the characters with fullness and feel for them, and you won't want to put the book down.

Trenchant, Funny, and Lucidly Written

The Headmaster Ritual is sharp and funny and sad in the tradition of Kingsley Amis' "Lucky Jim." It's full of lush prose and painfully well-wrought characters and it gave me a weird phantom nostalgia for my non-existent boarding school days. As has been pointed out by several others, Mr. Antrim is deft with the details -- he's really good at mapping emotions to the way people dress, act, talk, and generally stumble their way through the world.

One of the best books I've read in 3+ years

As someone who reads 200+ books a year, I know my way a little around literary works. "The Headmaster Ritual" by Taylor Antrim is by far one of the best books I've read in quite some period of time. I read this book in the same week I read Night Watch and On Beauty I found this book the most intriguing and found myself identifying with this book in more ways then one. (I enjoyed it so much, that afer I picked it up, I didn't put it down until I finished it.) I find throughout the book that Antrim uses imagery and references from books such as the Tao Te Ching, 25th-Anniversary Edition and true facts about North Korea, this book is not simply about a boarding school, it is about life, and about the current situation between the United Stares and North Korea. This book is a worthwhile read as it will help you identify more with foreign countries (and possible with your own country as well!). Additionally, it paints a true story of what life feels like, and he captures the emotions of the characters well, seeming to bring them to life, as the reader feels that he lives through them. As Stephen King once said "The objective of the writer is to make the reader forget that they are reading." Taylor Antrim does this amazingly well and I look forward to more of his work.

I enjoyed it

I don't understand the negative reviews. I really enjoyed this story and look forward to future works from the author. I think these reviews are particularly harsh and usually I do not comment on the opinion of other people.