Home School

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Overview

At the end of Charles Webb’s first novel, The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock rescues his beloved Elaine from a marriage made not in heaven but in California.

It is now eleven years and 3,000 miles later, and the couple live in Westchester County, a suburb of New York City, with their two young sons whom they are educating at home. Through no accident, a continent now stands between them and the boys’ surviving grandparent, now known as Nan, but ...

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More About This Book

Overview

At the end of Charles Webb’s first novel, The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock rescues his beloved Elaine from a marriage made not in heaven but in California.

It is now eleven years and 3,000 miles later, and the couple live in Westchester County, a suburb of New York City, with their two young sons whom they are educating at home. Through no accident, a continent now stands between them and the boys’ surviving grandparent, now known as Nan, but who in former days answered to Mrs. Robinson.

As the story opens, the Braddock household is in turmoil as the Westchester School Board attempts to quash the unconventional educational methods the family is practicing.

Desperate situations call for desperate remedies — even a cry for help to the mother-in-law from hell, who is only too happy to provide her loving services — but at a price far higher than could be expected.

Charles Webb has a knack for pinpointing the horrors and absurdities of domestic life, and Home School displays all the precision and wit that made The Graduate such a long-lasting success.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

It's one of modern pop culture's great mysteries: What happened after The Graduate's Ben and Elaine busted out of Elaine's church wedding and fled the world of hypocritical convention personified by her mother, Mrs. Robinson? In this sequel to his seminal 1963 novel, Webb's droll answer is that, 11 years on, they've settled down to a quiet suburban life in New York's Westchester County. Their sole antiestablishment gesture is to home-school their sons, Matt and Jason, using progressive educational nostrums that lead to open-minded debates over Jason's desire to study the French Revolution by building a backyard guillotine. When a crisis arises that only her legendary wiles can resolve, Mrs. Robinson-now primly called Nan-re-ensconces herself in their lives and guest room. Horrified, Ben and Elaine figure that a dose of the counterculture will expel the dragon lady, so they invite into the house a family of hippie home-schoolers so organic that the mother still breast-feeds her seven-year-old daughter. Armed only with his stammering earnestness, Ben tries to protect his family from an improbable alliance between Nan and the let-it-all-hang-out '70s. ("That was exactly right, the best possible response," he reassures Jason after the lad gently declines a swig of breast milk.) Webb crafts both a wicked sendup of the post-Vietnam cultural revolution and an acute satire of the romantic associations surrounding his characters and the generation-defining film, slyly suggesting that Ben and Elaine are the squarest people of all. (Jan.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information
Kirkus Reviews
A long-delayed-though not necessarily eagerly anticipated-sequel to The Graduate. Benjamin and Elaine Braddock are now parents, involved in the first throes of the home-schooling movement in the mid-'70s, when it was far more outre than it is now. Although their sons Jason and Matt have been responding well to the real-world education provided by their folks, the local school authorities (especially Mr. Claymore, a lecherous principal) are eager to break these pedagogical bonds. Fortuitously, at this moment Elaine's mother, the archetypal and legendary Mrs. Robinson, makes the 3,000 mile journey from California to New York (the Braddocks had wisely put some distance between themselves and Mrs. R) and unwittingly gives Benjamin and Elaine some fodder for blackmailing Claymore. (Let's just say the principal loses interest in asserting his academic authority.) Mrs. Robinson, now called "Nan" to avoid the egregious "Granny Robinson," wants to help with the boys' home schooling by having her grandchildren watch General Hospital so they can learn what it means to be a doctor. The novel then shifts into a different mode, when Garth and Goya-unrepentant Ivy League-educated hippies who are home-schooling their own children-also come for a visit. Their son Aaron is strapping but strange, both physique and weirdness attributable to his having breast-fed till the age of nine. (His seven-year-old sister Nefertiti still kindly helps herself.) The convergence of all these visitors creates understandable tension between Benjamin and Elaine. When Elaine takes everyone out for the evening, leaving Benjamin and his mother-in-law home alone, Mrs. Robinson daringly tries to recapture old times. A bit of fluffsure to satisfy those clamoring for a Graduate sequel.
From the Publisher
“Distinctive, wry, spare and beautifully modulated.”–Daily Telegraph

“Forty years overdue, the sequel to The Graduate was worth the wait. A great read.”–The London Paper

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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780312376307
  • Publisher: St. Martin's Press
  • Publication date: 1/8/2008
  • Pages: 240
  • Product dimensions: 6.06 (w) x 8.25 (h) x 1.12 (d)

Meet the Author

Charles Webb’s first novel, The Graduate, was made into the acclaimed film. Six years ago he moved to the UK and wrote New Cardiff.

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Customer Reviews

Average Rating 5
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Sort by: Showing all of 2 Customer Reviews

  • Posted March 21, 2009

    more from this reviewer

    Brilliant Sequel!

    Mr. Webb continues the flow of a modern American classic with Benjamin and Elaine married and now living in New York. Mrs. Robinson (now referred to as Nan) is still back on the West Coast and has very limited rights to visit Benjamin and Elaine's children.

    When the local school board tries to put the kabosh on Benjamin and Elaine's home schooling program, Benjamin reluctantly calls Nan to help them out. As things go along Nan gets herself back into Ben and Elaine's house and into a lot of the same trouble that we saw in the original story.

    The dialogue is great. Ben still talks the same way (sometimes he sounds like the robot from the original who asked things like would you like wire or wood). Great work Mr. Webb!

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  • Posted December 9, 2008

    more from this reviewer

    This tale tells what happened to Ben and Elaine a decade after he rescued her from a bad marriage (see The Graduate

    In Hastings, New York Ben and Elaine Braddock home teach their two sons only to have the Westchester County School Board and local principal Ralph Claymore inform them that Matt and Jason must return to school. Claymore insists he has received anonymous complaints from parents, but refuses to name anyone. They consider relocating to Vermont where their friends Garth and Goya Lewis home school their two kids, but besides being too rustic for them, Elaine has a problem with nine years old Aaron still being nursed by his mom.---------------- A family discussion resolves nothing so a desperate Ben calls California for help. He tells Elaine he called her mom Nan who will be staying at the nearby Ardsley Motel to help them. Ben also buys tape recorders. The four Braddocks attend the annual high schools faculty baseball game when Nan arrives. She talks with Claymore and they leave together. Not long afterward Nan gives a tape to Ben. He takes it to married Ralph who realizes his sexual tryst with Nan has been recorded. The kids remain home schooled. Now the problem is to send Nan to the other coast so Ben asks the Lewis family to stay with them. However the problems evolve into sending Nan back to California and the Lewis quartet to Vermont or have Elaine, Matt and Jason move elsewhere.--------------- This tale tells what happened to Ben and Elaine a decade after he rescued her from a bad marriage (see The Graduate). The support cast including their sons, her over the top mom, and their other eccentric guests bring out the best and worst in Ben and Elaine while each of Ben¿s solutions to problems leads to bigger problems. The amusing story line is fun but thin. Still fans of the movie and book The Graduate will enjoy HOME SCHOOL as the lead couple¿s personalities especially idealistic Ben remains true.--------------- Harriet Klausner

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