The Headmaster's Darlings by Katherine Clark

The Headmaster's Darlings by Katherine Clark

The Headmaster's Darlings is a satirical comedy of manners featuring the morbidly obese Norman Laney, an unorthodox, inspirational English teacher and college counsellor for an elite private school in Mountain Brook, a privileged community outside of Birmingham. A natural wonder from blue-collar Alabama, Laney has barged into the exclusive world of Mountain Brook on the strength of his sensational figure and its several-hundred-pound commitment to art and culture. His mission is to defeat ""the barbarians,"" introduce true civilization in place of its thin veneer, and change his southern world for the better. Although Laney is adored by his students (his ""darlings"") and by the society ladies (also his ""darlings"") who rely on him to be the life of their parties and the leader of their book clubs, there are others who think he is a larger-than-life menace to the comfortable status quo of Mountain Brook society and must be banished.

When Laney is summoned to the principal's office one day in November 1983, he expects to be congratulated for a recent public-relations triumph he engineered on behalf of the school. Instead his letter of resignation is demanded with no explanation given. Faced with an ultimatum and his imminent dismissal, Laney must outflank the principal at his own underhanded game, find out who said what about him and why, and launch his current crop of Alabama students into the wider world--or at least into Ivy League colleges.

In her debut novel, Clark, Katherine casts a comical eye on southern society and celebrates the power of great teachers and schools to transform the lives of young people and lift up their communities. Surrounded by a colourful cast of his colleagues, his young protégées and Mountain Brook's upper echelon, Laney emerges as a heroically idiosyncratic character with Falstaffian appetites, an inimitable wit and intellect, and a boundless generosity toward his students that reshapes their lives in profound, unexpected ways.

Katherine Clark holds an A.B. degree in English from Harvard and a Ph.D. in English from Emory. She is the co-author of the oral biographies Motherwit: An Alabama Midwife's Story, with Onnie Lee Logan, and Milking the Moon: A Southerner's Story of Life on This Planet with Eugene Walter (a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle award). A former student of Martin Hames, the inspiration for the character of Norman Laney, Clark has written three additional Mountain Brook novels featuring Laney and his students--All the Governor's Men, The Harvard Bride, and The Ex-Suicide, all forthcoming from the University of South Carolina Press imprint Story River Books. Clark is currently collaborating with Pat Conroy on his oral biography, also forthcoming from the University of South Carolina Press. She lives on the Gulf Coast. A 2009 inductee in the South Carolina Hall of Fame, Conroy is the author of five novels and a total of ten previous books, most recently The Death of Santini. Two of his novels, The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides, were made into Oscar-nominated films.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781611175387
ISBN 10	1611175380
Title	The Headmaster's Darlings
Author	Katherine Clark
Series	Story River Books
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	University of South Carolina Press
Year published	2015-08-30
Number of pages	248
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.