Items related to The Anatomy School
Absorbing, tense, and often very funny, The Anatomy School recreates the high anxieties and deep joys of a boy’s quest for his place in the world. This is the story of Martin Brennan and his growing up – a troubled boy in troubled times, a boy who knows all the questions but none of the answers. Before he can become an adult, Martin must unravel the sacred and contradictory mysteries of religion, science and sex; he must learn the value of friendship; but most of all he must pass his exams – whatever the cost.
A book that celebrates the desire to speak and the need to say nothing, The Anatomy School moves from the enforced silence of Martin’s Catholic school retreat, through the hilarious tea-and-biscuits repartee of his eccentric elders, to the awkward wit and loose profanity of his two friends – the charismatic Kavanagh and the subversive Blaise Foley – as we follow Martin from the initiations of youth to the devoutly wished consummation of the flesh.
From the Hardcover edition.
A book that celebrates the desire to speak and the need to say nothing, The Anatomy School moves from the enforced silence of Martin’s Catholic school retreat, through the hilarious tea-and-biscuits repartee of his eccentric elders, to the awkward wit and loose profanity of his two friends – the charismatic Kavanagh and the subversive Blaise Foley – as we follow Martin from the initiations of youth to the devoutly wished consummation of the flesh.
From the Hardcover edition.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
With The Anatomy School, his first novel since 1997's Grace Notes, Bernard MacLaverty returns to the dual concerns that animated that Booker-nominated success, and his earlier novels Lamb and Cal--the troubled politics of late 20th-century Ireland, and the familiar comedy of working-class Irish life.
Review:
We meet innocent Belfast Catholic teenager Michael Brennan as he enters a three-day retreat at Ardglass on the eve of his final year at school, resitting his A levels, to the increasing despair of his mother; by the end of the novel, at the end of the 1960s, Michael's innocence is somewhat tarnished, both by his own sexual awakening with an Australian girl in the local university's anatomy department, and by the sectarian bombs providing an inappropriate soundtrack outside. The bulk of the novel is given over to the schoolboy adventures of Brennan with his two friends, the popular sportsman Kavanagh and the sexually and politically mysterious new boy Blaise Foley. Seeking to spice up their workaday world of mocking their schoolmasters and sniggering about masturbation and pornography, together they embark on a torturously complex plot to hijack the year's A level papers--in Foley's eyes a blow against British imperialism but also a self-serving prank that leaves the ethically serious Michael in no small torment.
MacLaverty is at his best in the humorous moments, spinning out tense situations with the wandering skill of a stand-up comic and breathing new life into the compulsory old-folks' tea-party, the "dotery coterie" of Michael's fastidious mother, Nurse Gilliland, Father Farquharson and Mary Lawless. But undercutting the easy whimsy is a harsher tale of the inevitable death of innocence in a world of religion, politics and deception.--Alan Stewart
"MacLaverty is a master of many moods and this genial, intelligent novel finds him at his best" (Sunday Telegraph)
"A brilliant novel" (Daily Telegraph)
"A zestfully funny novel of male adolescence" (Sunday Times)
"Novels of this quality should never end" (Irish Independent)
"A brilliant novel" (Daily Telegraph)
"A zestfully funny novel of male adolescence" (Sunday Times)
"Novels of this quality should never end" (Irish Independent)
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherVintage
- Publication date2002
- ISBN 10 0676974457
- ISBN 13 9780676974454
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages368
- Rating
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