In the Fall They Come Back

October 9, 2017
Bausch tells the penetrating story of idealistic, newly graduated Ben Jameson, a hopeful young English teacher at Glenn Acres Preparatory School in Virginia. Enchanted by his own grandiose notions of inspiring young minds and changing young peoples’ lives, Ben flouts the typical English lesson plans, as well as the conventions of teacher-student relationships; he wants to “get in amongst them and stir them up.” Despite warnings from his girlfriend, the school principal, and more experienced (and more cynical) colleagues, Ben becomes increasingly involved in the lives of his students: he wonders at one student’s history of sexual molestation, he hopes to save another from abuse, and he becomes enraptured by a beautiful but troubled girl who has returned to the school for a fifth year with one last chance to graduate. Bausch perceptively explores the complexities and dangers of idealism and the motivations behind altruism. The book’s greatest strength is its portrayal of the earnest yet misguided Ben as being ignorant to the fact that the more he “helps,” the more damage he inflicts.

November 1, 2017

How involved should teachers be in the lives of their students? This question is at the heart of Bausch's latest novel, set in the hothouse atmosphere of a private high school in the northern Virginia suburbs. Narrator Ben Jameson looks back on his brief career as a teacher at Glenn Acres Prep in 1985. As a new teacher, Ben believes he can make a difference, especially in the lives of three damaged young people in his class. George is abused by his bully of a father, Suzanne is a trauma victim who moves silently through the halls like a ghost, and Leslie is a troublemaker, a beautiful but spoiled and willful daughter of wealthy parents. She is the one all the other teachers warn Ben about, but he, by turns cynical and idealistic, still thinks he can help these kids turn their lives around. But will he go too far in doing so? VERDICT The author of many works of fiction (The Legend of Jesse Smoke; Far as the Eye Can See), Bausch this time presents an absorbing character study of a young man who may not understand his students--or himself--as well as he thinks he does.--Leslie Patterson, Rehoboth, MA

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September 15, 2017
A young teacher mismanages relationships with his students at a small private school in Virginia.After announcing that "what follows is based on a true story," Bausch (The Legend of Jesse Smoke, 2016, etc.) opens his latest novel with ruminations. "What happened to me in those two short years may have been a consequence of some fault in the understanding between teacher and student, but it changed the world for me in ways I'm still contemplating. This is not a story about teaching. Nor is it about education, or school, although most of what happened started in a school. This is a story about caring a little too much; or maybe about not caring enough. I really don't know which. The only thing I know for certain is that I wish a lot of it did not happen." Readers may feel he should perhaps have settled some of these matters in his mind before embarking on this account, in which the trouble ahead is signaled so often that it is almost an anticlimax when it occurs. By that time, the narrator has thoroughly convinced us of his lack of aptitude for teaching, his immaturity, and his irresponsibility in handling his students' personal problems. He has one who is being physically abused, another who refuses to speak or make eye contact, and one who is so beautiful that he, a 25-year-old with a live-in girlfriend, is unable to think straight in her presence. His half-hearted attempt to teach writing involves showing the students movies about the Holocaust and having them keep copious personal journals. Supposedly they can fold a page to request it not be read, but in fact, both he and the head of the school read whatever they want. Most of the time, he admits, it's all so tedious, he just writes comments in the margin--"Thank you for sharing"; "It's good to be honest"--without even reading what's there. This is probably exactly what really happened--down to the dog who craps in the classroom--but that's not good enough in a novel. Vivid details and tricky situations fail to come together to create a compelling or meaningful story.

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November 1, 2017
Looking back nearly a quarter century, Ben Jameson, now a government attorney, reflects on the two years he spent in the mid-1980s as an English teacher at a private school in Virginia. Fresh out of graduate school, Jameson was barely older than his students. Whether it was proximity in age or a God complex, Jameson displayed a heightened empathy for three troubled teens: George, suffering physical and emotional abuse by his father; Suzanne, another abuse victim, so traumatized she is unable to speak or make eye contact; and Leslie, whose beauty belies a manipulative but fragile persona. Though always couched in the guise of his role as a concerned educator, Jameson nonetheless insinuates himself into their lives in inappropriate and even tragic ways. Bausch's (The Legend of Jesse Smoke, 2016) unreliable narrator offers a mid-life contemplation of a brief career abounding in delusions and rationalizations that do the opposite of clarifying the events that still haunt him. Readers will be haunted by Bausch's eerie psychological portrait of a young man who grasped too much power too soon.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)