At Briarwood School for Girls: A Novel

by Michael Knight

Overview

From the award-winning writer of Eveningland and The Typist, Michael Knight, At Briarwood School for Girls is an incisive, witty, beautifully-written novel set at a boarding school in the Virginia countryside

It’s 1994 and Lenore Littlefield is a junior at Briarwood School for Girls. She plays basketball. She hates her roommate. History is her favorite subject. She has told no one that she’s pregnant. Everything, in other words, is under control.

Meanwhile, Disney has announced plans to build a new theme park just up the road, a “Technicolor simulacrum of American History” right in the middle of one of the most history-rich regions of the country. If successful, the development will forever alter the character of Prince William County, VA, and have unforeseeable consequences for the school.

When the threat of the theme park begins to intrude on the lives of the faculty and students at Briarwood, secrets will be revealed and unexpected alliances will form. Lenore must decide whom she can trust—will it be a middle-aged history teacher struggling to find purpose in his humdrum life? A lonely basketball coach tasked with directing the school play? A reclusive playwright still grappling with her own Briarwood legacy? Or a teenage ghost equally adept at communicating with the living via telephone or Ouija board?

Following a cast of memorable characters as they reckon with questions about fate, history, and the possibility of happiness, At Briarwood School for Girls is a stunning and inventive new work from a master storyteller.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780802148926
Publisher:	Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date:	04/21/2020
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

MICHAEL KNIGHT is the author of the novels The Typist and Divining Rod; the short story collections Eveningland, Goodnight Nobody and Dogfight and Other Stories; and the novella The Holiday Season. He teaches creative writing at the University of Tennessee and lives in Knoxville with his family.

Read an Excerpt

“Do you believe in ghosts, Mr. Bishop?”
She could feel him staring at her, wondering about her. The thing about Mr. Bishop was, he wanted to teach you something. That wasn’t always the case. Some teachers wanted to entertain or impress you, some wanted you to like them, some just wanted you to behave for an hour and move along. But Mr. Bishop believed what he said in class. He was almost too earnest. Even now, he was giving her question more consideration that it deserved.
“I believe a place can be haunted,” he said, “if that’s what you mean. By the past or history or whatever. And people, too. People can be haunted. But if you mean actual spirits from the other side, then no, I don’t guess I do.”
Lenore wiggled her toes inside her shoes.
“Why do you ask?” he said.
“Oh, you know the stories about Thornton Hall.”
Mr. Bishop smiled. “Does this mean you’ve had a run in with Elizabeth Archer?”
“I’m pregnant,” Lenore said.
She hadn’t meant to tell him. She felt as startled by her revelation as Mr. Bishop looked and she had the strange sensation the she might suddenly float up off the ground, her heels lifting out of the snow and then her toes and she imagined gazing down on Mr. Bishop and his dog, a hovering ghost of herself.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for At Briarwood School for Girls

“Knight’s characters are memorable and nuanced—a credit to his sharp, skillful writing. This is a stunning novel with a hint of the supernatural that’s sure to delight readers.”—Publishers Weekly

“A deft, charming Southern coming-of-age novel… A quick-paced, sharp, cleverly designed book by a talented writer.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Like a package of sweets sent from home, At Briarwood School for Girls is replete with the familiar, beloved, humorous elements of a boarding school book—old trees and legacies, a headmistress, a ghost, and girls out of uniform—and surprise at what real life offers up. I read the book in an evening—so irresistible and satisfying was it, I kept turning the pages.”—Christine Schutt

Praise for Eveningland

“The spirit of Eudora Welty broods over these adroitly crafted stories set in and around coastal Alabama, evoking a world coiled tight as a conch shell.”—O Magazine

“Impressive… ‘Water and Oil’ is deft and wonderful, wholly original, and ‘Smash and Grab’ is sharp and fresh with an ending like something out of O. Henry or Thomas McGuane.”—New York Times Book Review

“Novelistic…compressed and supple, with a Cheever-esque sensitivity to texture and light.”—Garden & Gun

From the Publisher

11/15/2018

In 1994, even as students and faculty at Briarwood School for Girls fret about how the American history theme park Disney plans to build nearby will impact both their school and the surrounding Prince William County, VA, pregnant junior Lenore Littlefield must decide to whom she should confide: the history teacher or basketball coach, disaffected for different reasons; a playwright burdened by her Briarwood past; or the resident teenage ghost, who chats by phone or Ouija board. From Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award winner Knight (Eveningland).

Library Journal

2019-01-21

From veteran Knight (Eveningland, 2017, etc.), a deft, charming Southern coming-of-age novel—one that pays both attention and tribute to the legacy of the million-pound behemoth in that genre, To Kill a Mockingbird.

It's early spring 1994. Lenore Littlefield, a junior at the Briarwood School for Girls, is trying hard to concentrate on the end of basketball season and on the usual dorm rivalries and roommate strife rather than on the secret that she's shared, and plans to share, with no one: She's pregnant. Meanwhile, as punishment for a minor curfew violation, she's sentenced to help fill out the sparse ranks of the drama club, which, after years of resistance, will be staging the Pulitzer-winning play by Briarwood's most renowned alumna, now a Harper Lee-like rural recluse who's ceased to write. When the fill-in director, Lenore's hoops coach, Patricia Fink, moves Lenore into the lead role of a bright, troubled boarding school girl who's visited by the Phantom of Thornton Hall, strange things start happening and unexpected possibilities arise. Meanwhile, the Disney company—seeing in Civil War-battlefield-rich Virginia a fertile ground for attracting tourists—has acquired a massive nearby tract and is planning to develop it into a theme park called America (one harrowing example Knight gives of what this might look like is a ride designed to give rich kids and their parents a sense of what the Middle Passage felt like). Lenore's uncomfortable confidant, Bishop, the history teacher to whom she one day blurts her secret, thinks that if only he can get the playwright to emerge from exile for opening night, he can get the old firebrand to say something that will bring publicity and send the Mouse scurrying back to its corporate hole.

A quick-paced, sharp, cleverly designed book by a talented writer.

Kirkus Reviews