W. Edward Blain

Love Cools is a loose sequel to W. Edward Blain's Passion Play featuring some minor characters from the previous book pushed to the forefront for this story. As I noted in my review of Passion Play, I was a student years ago at Woodberry Forest where Blain teaches, and he was my 6th Form English teacher. The Montpelier School for Boys, a very thinly disguised fictional version of Woodberry, also makes a return appearance, but only as a bit player this time, as the central character in the book finds himself expelled from the school in the first chapter. Despite this, the school looms in the background of the entire story, with a dark lurking presence that colors much of the action that takes place as the fall out from this expulsion drives Richard throughout the novel.

Richard Blackburn, established in Passion Play as a prank playing delinquent, takes center stage in this book. As noted before, in the first chapter he is expelled from the Montpelier School for Boys after being found guilty of an honor code violation: Oscar Davidson, one of his teachers, accused him of plagiarizing a story and turning it in as his own work. Although he maintains his innocence, Richard's reputation as a prank player makes his protestations less than credible in the face of Davidson's testimony and the apparently plagiarized story. It seems that at least in part, that the book is intended to call into question the integrity of the Woodberry style honor system by showing how potentially easy it could be to manipulate it. After being expelled from the school, he returns to the fictional town of Rockbridge (which appears to be a fictionalized version of Lexington, Virginia, which is situated in Rockbridge County, and is coincidentally the location of Washington & Lee University where Blain earned his B.A.) and is drawn into a web of family politics. His relationship with his older, more athletic and sexually assured brother Tucker has become strained following a lawnmower accident that nearly permanently crippled Tucker. His relationship with his father has collapsed following what, in Richard's eyes, was his father's unforgivable sin of taking Richard's mother's side against Richard. Finally, Richard's mother, a a soap actress who has recently lost her job, struggles to acclimatize herself to living in a somewhat sleepy Virginia town after years as a working television actress in New York.

All of this family drama provides grist for the mill when the real mystery of the novel is introduced. Sarah Davidson, a college professor at the University of Virginia (notably, the university where Blain received his M.A., one thing he seems to take seriously is the adage "write what you know". I can't blame him, the resulting books are quite good), had been killed in a fire in her Charlottesville home. Tying this together is the fact that Mrs. Davidson was the wife of Oscar Davidson, and the sister of the principal of the Rockbridge Arts School that Richard begins attending following his expulsion from Montpelier. In addition, Chris Nivens, another teacher at the Arts school was her research assistant. Tying everything up in a big bow is the fact that Sarah moonlighted on the side as a writer for the soap opera that Richard's mother was written off of, and apparently it was Sarah's decision to eliminate the character.

(A short digression. This is probably the most implausible element of the book. The idea that a single writer on a major soap opera would have sufficient authority to eliminate a character on her own initiative simply strains credibility to the breaking point. This element is necessary to the story though, as it gives Patricia Montgomery a potential motive to kill Sarah Davidson and keeps her on the list of suspects).

It turns out that for a professor of English, Sarah Davidson had an impressively long list of people with a motive to kill her and fortuitously, most of them turn up in Rockbridge and become involved with the Arts School or the related Arts Council. Included in this list is Richard himself, whose primary motivation through most of the book is to get revenge upon Oscar Davidson who he believes framed him for plagiarism. Richard continues to maintain his innocence of this offense, but through much of the book harbors guilt over an unvoiced crime that is vague enough to potentially include causing the fire that killed Sarah Davidson via a prank gone wrong. This is made somewhat plausible by the extraordinarily well-drawn and completely unpleasant character of Oscar Davidson, who appears to detest his students and hate every moment spent teaching. (In yet another side note, the character of Oscar Davidson appears to this former student to be at least partially based upon a particular teacher at Woodberry who was, and probably still is, notoriously harsh).

As in Passion Play the action of the story is framed by Shakespearean productions, although in Love Cools there is not one, but two plays: a production of Hamlet and a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The themes of both plays are reflected in the action of the story, and to a certain extent that is one of the few problems with Love Cools. While unmooring the story from Montpelier gives the story a more expansive setting and allows for a greater variety of characters, the novel is in some ways too busy with multiple interlocking storylines. The fact that it required two Shakespeare plays to provide sufficient literary allusions is, to me, an indication that the story is simply too complex. There are, in short, too many characters, too many subplots, and too much confusion. Some characters, such as the bulimic Nancy Gale Nofsinger, are little more than distractions thrown in as somewhat less than convincing obstacles. The story meanders a bit, adding some petty embezzlement to the mixture of revenge and jealousy that pervades the atmosphere, until a second grisly murder ramps up the tension, and surprisingly, most of the same characters who had possible reasons to kill Sarah Davidson also have potential reasons to kill the second victim, and the opportunity to do so.

Despite the overly complicated nature of the story, the resolution is better than that of Passion Play, as the killer is uncovered and foiled not by his own hand, but as a result of some quick thinking. While many of the "hero" characters have somewhat predictable happy endings in the book, and the villains get their well-deserved comeuppances, the story is unpredictable enough to avoid giving away the identity of the murderer, or prevent several sad endings. One untied up thread at the end of the novel is why a key character who did not commit the murders, but tampered with evidence, was not charged with obstruction of justice, being allowed to merely walk out of the story after being exposed. Overall, despite being convoluted, the story is a fine successor to Passion Play, and although quite different, is equally as good.

Final note that is probably of interest to no one who did not attend Woodberry Forest at the same time I did: Two of the tertiary characters in the book, Mr. Epes and Mr. Vita, are clearly named after identically named teachers who were in the Woodberry English department when I was a student there. This has no impact on the story itself, and the characters are so minor that it is impossible to draw any other connection between the real person and the character. However, I could not let such an obvious reference go by without comment.

This has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds.… (més)

At the outset I must reveal that W. Edward Blain, who was, and at the time of this writing still is, an English teacher at Woodberry Forest School, taught me English in my 6th Form year there. Consequently it is quite possible that this novel, published just four years after I graduated and set at the fictional Montpelier School for Boys which is an incredibly thinly disguised version of Woodberry Forest, might hold more interest for me than it does for the average reader. Notwithstanding this, Passion Play is a very good mystery novel involving faculty intrigue, adolescent turmoil, and a series of murders.

One thing must be made clear: in addition to serving as the backdrop for most of the action, the Montpelier School for Boys is, in a certain sense, a character in the novel. The particular and somewhat unique way of life at the school dominates the action throughout the novel. And that way of life mirrors the real life of Woodberry students almost exactly. Montpelier students go to classes on a rolling schedule, with Tuesday and Friday afternoons off, with Saturday classes, just like Woodberry students. They have dorm inspection at 10:15 every day, are required (with limited exceptions) to participate in organized sports, have mandatory nightly two-hour study periods, all just like real Woodberry students. Even the "training meal" athletes who are going to an away event eat (roast beef, mashed potatoes, peas, and white bread, which everyone would just mix together to eat) is exactly the same. And, of course, the most important element common to both schools is the student run, single sanction honor code that prohibits lying, stealing, or cheating. To make the parallel even more obvious, the main building at the Montpelier Academy for Boys, housing administrative offices, the dining hall, and several dorms for the boys is Stringfellow Hall, while at Woodberry Forest the same function is filled by the Walker Building, named for the school's founder Robert Stringfellow Walker. In short, if an element of student life is introduced into the novel, it is almost certain that it is drawn from reality.

But other than providing a view into the world in which the students at Woodberry Forest live and work, does Passion Play deliver a story worth reading? The answer to that a resounding yes. The novel opens with a bang as an unnamed character picks up an adolescent male prostitute in New York and proceeds to murder him in a dingy movie theatre. The action then shifts to the Montpelier School in Virginia, where the murders continue as boy after boy is killed (for the record, as far as I know, no students attending Woodberry Forest have ever been murdered). The story is told from a shifting third person viewpoint, allowing Blain to move about from character to character, and relate his experiences in the unfolding grisly drama from each of their perspectives. This is a brilliant storytelling device, as it allows Blain to tell the story primarily from the perspective of Ben Warden, the head of the school's English department, Thomas Boatwright, a somewhat ordinary student at the school, and Cynthia Warden, Ben Warden's wife. Each has a unique perspective on both life at the school and the mystery. Finally, the unknown killer crops up from time to time as a viewpoint character, giving the reader insight into his motivations, and allowing Blain to cast suspicion on a number of characters in the process. Some chapters are told from the perspective of a handful of other minor characters, but the bulk of the story is told from the perspective of the four main characters.

From my perspective, as a former student, the character who I identified with most was Boatwright, whose life at the school rang true to me. His travails as he struggles to deal with the rigorous academic standards, the vagaries of the disciplinary system and its interaction with the honor code, and the usual adolescent difficulties understanding the new and alluring world of sex, are compounded by his difficulties dealing with Greg Lipscomb, his black roommate, and understanding (or even being aware of) the racism, both blatant and subtle, that Lipscomb must deal with. For one unfamiliar with the school, it should come as little surprise that as a private boarding school in the Southern United States, Woodberry has had few black students, and those that have attended have had to deal with some fairly nasty behavior by scions of wealth Southern families. Boatwright must deal with the overt racism displayed by several of the more obnoxious characters in the book, but also comes to realize his own prejudices and the pressures his roommate faces. Boatwright also has to figure out who, in the jungle that is the world of adolescent boys, who to turn to for advice concerning relationships with girls, and stumbles through making several foolish choices along the way.

The story of the two Wardens is more serious, but somewhat less compelling. Cynthia is mysteriously ill, and much of the action of both Ben and Cynthia in early part of the book is preoccupied with unraveling why this is so. Ben is a somewhat notable poet, and struggles to continue his output and his responsibilities to his students even while he struggles with his wife's unknown malady. The action of the story is told against the backdrop of the school's production of Othello, and although Ben is not the director of the play, as the head of the School's English department he (and Cynthia) are deeply involved. The use of Othello, with its themes of love, betrayal, and sex, is no accident, as those themes are mirrored in the action of the story ranging from Boatwright's fumbling adolescent romance with a girl from a nearby all girls boarding school (which seems to be roughly based upon the Madeira School for Girls, whose former headmistress Jean Harris famously killed her lover Herman Tarnower), to the rude sexual escapades of the bully boy Robert Staines, to the ill-disguised lust some of the other faculty members have for Cynthia, and finally, the sexual perversions of the unknown killer. Othello also serves to highlight the racial tensions that underlie the work, as Lipscomb assumes the title role in an effort to avoid the racial stereotyping that would accompany his participating in sports and prove himself intellectually. On that score, choosing to appear as Othello seems like something of an odd choice, given that the part is so identified with black actors, which seemed to me to run against the point of having Lipscomb's character in the book to begin with.

There are only a few minor miscues in the book. Some of the chapters don't work very well as they are told from the perspective of viewpoint characters with little to offer to the story. In one, for example, a vain faculty member who also happens to be a basketball coach spends much of the chapter trying to steer the conversation to his team's recent victory, and secure praise for himself. The chapter is mostly harmless, but it doesn't add much to the story, as the character doesn't really figure into any other part of the plot. The other weakness involves the resolution of the story. The mystery of who the killer is is not really solved. Instead, the killer reveals himself and ends the mystery on his own. In effect, the actions of all the other characters of the story become more or less irrelevant at the end, as the killer takes matters into his own hands. This is a rather unsatisfying end to the central element of the book.

Despite these minor flaws, the book remains quite good, primarily because the murder mystery mostly serves as a framing mechanism for exploring the relationships between the characters, and on that score, the book is excellent. As an aside, I must say that while none of the characters in the book were direct copies of faculty or students from my tenure at the school, there were definitely characters who, in the broad strokes, I recognized and have a feeling I know who they were loosely based upon. Being drawn from real people probably helps make the characters and their interplay so effective in the book, and make their interactions ring true. In the end, this book is an excellent read for anyone who is interested in a good mystery coupled with a detailed and well-crafted treatment of life in a boys boarding school.

This has also been posted to my blog Dreaming About Other Worlds.… (més)