The Expectations

May 27, 2019
Tilney’s rewarding debut concerns a freshman at a New Hampshire boarding school in the ’90s who finds that high school isn’t turning out the way he imagined it would. Fourteen-year-old Ben Weeks arrives at St. James thinking that everything will finally start to go right for him. The school has always been part of his family’s life: Ben’s father, Harry, helped renovate the squash courts, and Ben’s uncle Russell is on the board. Ben’s the best boys’ squash player in the country, but he quickly becomes disillusioned with it. His dreams of having a best-friend roommate are dashed when he’s paired with the sweet and awkward Ahmed Al-Khaled, a target of bullies. Ben also discovers that—due to a series of bad investments—Harry can’t afford to pay his tuition. Since pride and competition with Russell prevent Harry from agreeing to financial aid, Ben agrees to let Ahmed’s rich father pick up the tab. Ahmed starts hanging with a stoner crowd that accepts him, though Ben fears that Ahmed will be caught and kicked out. The author effectively touches on matters of class, societal pressures, and what it really means to be cool. Tilney’s memorable boarding school novel hits the mark.

June 1, 2019
Tilney's sensitive and perceptive debut follows insecure, ambitious Ben Weeks through his first few months at an isolated New England prep school in the mid-nineties. Ben, a champion squash player whose male relatives have attended St. James for centuries, hopes to establish an image as a better, cooler, and altogether less embarrassing version of himself. He is hindered by his family's increasing financial instability, his qualms about the behavior of the socially superior upperclassmen, and his association with a roommate even less cool than he is. Ahmed Al-Khaled, from the United Arab Emirates, has money to spare but no clue how to appease the sneering young men who constantly bully him. As the year wears on, Ben must decide what he will give up to stay in a place that is not at all what he had expected. Writing primarily from Ben's point of view, Tilney also alights for a sentence or two at a time in the minds of those who surround him, which adds depth to the narrative.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)