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The History Room (2012)

by Eliza Graham(Favorite Author)

3.1 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0330509276 (ISBN13: 9780330509275)

languge

English

genre

Middle Grade & Children's

publisher

Pan Macmillan

review 1: I found this book hard going. Despite the shock at the beginning, it didn't grip me and I had to struggle to get to page 100 without giving up. Once the scene shifted to Bohemia, I regained interest, but there are factual inaccuracies:The Prague Spring of 1968 is referred to on one occasion as the Velvet Revolution, which took place in 1989. Hana, the Czech mother of Jan, gave birth to him in 1968 or 1969 at the latest. She died in 1980, but not before giving birth to a girl, Sofia, who says her brother was already 12 when she was born. this is just possible, but then why does Sofia have any memories of growing up with her mother? If you accept this chronology, it sounds as if Hana died in childbirth, but apparently she died of cancer. In a mystery novel, these oversights... more are glaring.On a more positive note, the Epilogue was genuinely chilling. I am, by coincidence, listening on audio file to Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris, and this is also a novel set in an English public school, where an apparently wronged character from a previous generation is plotting revenge on the school. I have no doubts that this is a far superior novel. The quality of the writing stands out. I wish I could say the same of The History Room's writing style.
review 2: This is a novel where nearly everyone has a secret past, and their past impacts on the present to create a plot that gradually unfolds for the reader. The plot begins with a prank at a private school, which shocks the pupils and staff. In trying to find the culprit, Meredith Cordingley, a teacher at the school, must delve into the motives of her pupils and into her family's past. In doing so she discovers her father, the headmaster, is not the man she thought he was, and that the repercussions of war still haunt him. Not only must she contend with family secrets, but Emily, a teaching assistant at the school has an axe to grind, and will stop at nothing to get revenge for events of the past. Chilling and mysterious, this is a book I can highly recommend. less

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