Instead of being beaten by the system, she has risen up and played her own game. No concessions were made for female staff. From early on at King Henry’s she was humiliated and had to fight sexism and prejudice.

Rebecca has overcome so many hurdles in her career and indeed in her life generally. Told from the perspectives of Rebecca and Straightly, this was a book that required concentration, the back and forth between timelines and characters wasn’t an issue, these are clearly defined but the plot and backstory is a complex one and there are many characters which need to be remembered from both timelines. Rebecca has her demons from childhood and as she recounts her terrors which blighted her life it becomes clear that her brother Conrad was not the saint his parents believed him to be but was it just innocent childhood teasing or something more sinister. The story goes back and forth between the present time of 2006 at St Oswalds and Rebecca’s time as a supply teacher at King Henry’s in 1989. And it begins with the discovery of a body within the grounds of St Oswalds. Having been at St Oswalds for decades, he thinks he knows its secrets and those of his friends however what he is about to learn will throw all that into disarray and doubt. Roy Straightly, a Classics master, is one of the old guard.

To dispense with the patriarchy of the old guard that she herself has been subject to whilst a teacher at nearby King Henry’s Grammar School and she has a tale to tell. Rebecca is determined to do things her way. Following a scandal at St Oswalds and a merger, girls are now admitted into its hallowed halls. It used to be a Grammar School for Boys but things have changed. Her life changed from that day – her parents never got over his disappearance and emotionally they disappeared from her life too.įast forward over 30 years and Rebecca Buckfast is the New new head of St Oswalds Academy, a title that has never been given to a woman in five hundred years. Rebecca Price was 5 years old when her elder brother Conrad went missing on her birthday.

This actually didn’t matter that I hadn’t read either of the previous books, I quite happily read this as a standalone. When I accepted this for review, I had no idea that A Narrow Door was the third book in the Malbry series featuring St Oswalds, following on from Gentleman and Players and A Different Class. My thanks to Tracy Fenton of Compulsive Readers for the invitation and to the publisher for the review copy. I’m not as prolific a poster as some so it has taken a while to get there, but it does seem rather a momentous milestone – to me anyway! Now on to the book! 😊 I’d like to make a small personal announcement first if I may – this is my 1000th post since starting my blog in August 2013.

A narrow door a novel joanne harris