At Briarwood School for Girls

November 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).

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2019
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.

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April 15, 2019
Knight (Eveningland) follows a cast of unhappily struggling characters in this superior boarding school novel set in 1994 Virginia. Junior Lenore Littlefield reels from her parents’ messy divorce and has told no one at Briarwood School For Girls she is pregnant. As punishment for missing curfew too many times, she is drafted into the Drama Club’s production of the reclusive alumna Eugenia Marsh’s provocative play about a pregnant Briarwood student who communes with the ghost of a schoolgirl suicide victim. The play, incongruously directed by no-nonsense basketball coach Patricia Fink, aligns with real life as Lenore and her roommate use a Ouija board to contact the ghost haunting their dorm. Lenore confides her pregnancy in history teacher Lucas Bishop, who keeps his promise to remain silent but becomes a focus of ire from the administration when he presents vocal opposition to Disney’s (real) plans to develop an American history amusement park near Manassas Battlefield. In the swirl of these crises, the characters make calm but radical plans to combat their personal disappointments. 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. Agent: Warren Frazier, John Hawkins & Associates.