The Knight’s Surprising Lack of Gender Stereotype

My Dad reads A LOT. Then he gives the books to me. This is one of those and the first book I am going to review.

I relate to this book because I went to a boarding school, but it wasn’t a girls’ boarding school; it was a boys’ boarding school. That’s a long and torrid story that will probably show up here and there in various posts. My dad worked there. He likes books about boarding schools. I do too, but not because I think of boarding school life as some idyllic, pastoral bygone days that I long to recapture through fiction. Rather, it was a very specific kind of hell that only other people who have intimate knowledge of it can convey, and then it is interesting to read because someone understands you. Fear not, you do not have to have suffered through a boarding school or a single sex educational environment to enjoy At Briarwood School for Girls. It lacks hazing scenes or rehash of Dead Poets’ Society, thank God. It’s just a quirky, decent little read, fine for readers in middle school and up if you don’t mind your kids knowing what abortion is (no graphics just topic). There’s a ghost in it but it isn’t very ghostly so you paranormalists just pass on by because that aspect of this book won’t do it for you.

Let me tell you what sells this book to me. It’s not its plot or most of the characters or the setting or even the somewhat interesting true to history sideline that Disney considered building an American history based theme park in Prince William County….it’s the relationship between Coach Fink, the woman basketball coach everyone thinks is a lesbian but isn’t and Bishop, the sort of failure to launch History teacher who is lost to himself and somewhat capable of caring about other human beings who are female and with whom he has nothing in common.

Coach Fink reminds me just a touch of Coach Bieste from Glee with whom I have a few things in common. I don’t know who to compare Bishop to except for half of the men who taught me when I was in boarding school. Oh yes, and he has a dog too that runs freely across campus. Remember that, boarding school people? The author, Michael Knight, who teaches creative writing at the University of TN Knoxville (an institution where I taught Spanish and audited creative writing courses, but sadly not Mr. Knight’s) has done an outstanding job of portraying gender in these two characters in a not cliched way, and my dears, that is very hard to find. Mr. Knight has created a character who, although he may not understand women, is at least aware that this is something a person could actually try to do.

Here’s a picture of Mr. Knight on the back jacket of the book looking all preppy and super mainstream in his blue striped oxford but with the possibility in his eyes that he too has considered not being a misogynist even though it’s a lifestyle he could clearly have access to. It’s a good thing I never had a creative writing class with him at UT because I probably would have had a crush on him, showing myself out to be a super gender stereotype. Oh whatever. Don’t judge. You know you would have too.