“THAT SHE HAD NOT KILLED HIM IN HER SLEEP WAS STILL THE GREAT RELIEF OF EVERY MORNING.”

One of my biggest fears, when I pick up a book, is that it’s going to be one of those book that start slow and build into something fantastic. The reason I fear this is because my short attention span rarely allows me to go more than 30 pages of ho-hum writing to see what’s on the other side. That’s why when I finally got a chance to sit down and read Lily King’s “The English Teacher,” I groaned a little inside each of the first 30 pages.

The book starts slow, I can’t mince words. It’s Lily King Lite, gentle descriptions of two big characters and a brief buzzing around their head of what they are really thinking, which, by the way, is just a pin prick of truth developed later in the book. It’s almost like they are automatons at the beginning, thinking the thoughts that characters being introduced must think in order for a reader to get caught up on their life super-fast. Later, right around the magical page 30, their personalities actually start to manifest in their thoughts- creating a distinct crater between Beginning Protagonists and Plot Protagonists. This isn’t very good writing (or editing) in general, but I suspect more of an accident than a tell tale sign of the writer.

Once the awkwardness of the beginning is over and the characters are established and their internal monologues given voice and neurotic behaviors abound, the writing slides majestically into a kind of symbiotic rhythm. The fucked up mental issues and situations the characters put themselves in and the familiarity and disturbing similarities found between reader and character makes the book hard to read and hard to put down at the same time. Don’t mistake it- the characters in the book are not likable. At least, not all the time. They are sometimes wonderful, but often they think inappropriate thoughts and behave in inappropriate ways. Thoughts I have had. Thoughts any reader has had. Not typical thoughts given to protagonists. They are thoughts that, when we have them, we feel guilt and shame and never tell anyone, and if we know that others have these thoughts we feel discomfort and embarrassment for them and instantly create a division between Us and Them- The Thinkers of Inappropriate Thoughts.

The main character, Vida, has wild red curls that define her in my mind. I read and while I never really envisioned her face straight on, always a profile, if that, I imagined her hair in every scene. Sometimes she was me, and sometimes I was her, and while her problems were not necessarily my problems, our neuroses were not all that unfamiliar with one another.

I highly recommend this book, especially to anyone who loves reading and classics and the English language. These characters are so well developed and deep and unfortunate and they are paralleled by classic stories and poems, most notably Thomas Hardy’s work. Vida can’t deal with her own life head on, she has to worm her way in with characters and plots of books she knows better than her own world. I get that.

And if the story and characters weren’t enough, the writing is brilliant and beautiful. The writing adjusts subtly to the characters doing the thinking or speaking, giving another level to the characters. They don’t all share the same voice- the voice of the Author. They have their own words. Their own rhythms. I love that. Also? Vida’s rant about modernism in her classroom is priceless.

Go. Read. Love this book. Get past the first 30 pages and be unable to put the book down until midnight when you finish. That’s what I did.