Product Description
At the end of Charles Webb’s first novel, The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock rescues his beloved Elaine from a marriage made not in heaven but in California.
It is now eleven years and 3,000 miles later, and the couple live in Westchester County, a suburb of New York City, with their two young sons whom they are educating at home. Through no accident, a continent now stands between them and the boys’ surviving grandparent, now known as Nan, but who in… More >>
Tags: Home, school
#1 by Harriet Klausner on April 23, 2010 - 7:12 pm
In Hastings, New York Ben and Elaine Braddock home teach their two sons only to have the Westchester County School Board and local principal Ralph Claymore inform them that Matt and Jason must return to school. Claymore insists he has received anonymous complaints from parents, but refuses to name anyone. They consider relocating to Vermont where their friends Garth and Goya Lewis home school their two kids, but besides being too rustic for them, Elaine has a problem with nine years old Aaron still being nursed by his mom.
A family discussion resolves nothing so a desperate Ben calls California for help. He tells Elaine he called her mom Nan who will be staying at the nearby Ardsley Motel to help them. Ben also buys tape recorders. The four Braddocks attend the annual high schools faculty baseball game when Nan arrives. She talks with Claymore and they leave together. Not long afterward Nan gives a tape to Ben. He takes it to married Ralph who realizes his sexual tryst with Nan has been recorded. The kids remain home schooled. Now the problem is to send Nan to the other coast so Ben asks the Lewis family to stay with them. However the problems evolve into sending Nan back to California and the Lewis quartet to Vermont or have Elaine, Matt and Jason move elsewhere.
This tale tells what happened to Ben and Elaine a decade after he rescued her from a bad marriage (see The Graduate). The support cast including their sons, her over the top mom, and their other eccentric guests bring out the best and worst in Ben and Elaine while each of Ben’s solutions to problems leads to bigger problems. The amusing story line is fun but thin. Still fans of the movie and book The Graduate will enjoy HOME SCHOOL as the lead couple’s personalities especially idealistic Ben remains true.
Harriet Klausner
Rating: 4 / 5
#2 by Daniel W. Hays on April 23, 2010 - 9:31 pm
Forty-odd years ago – some would say very odd – Charles Webb published his first novel. A study in modern life called “The Graduate.” It was a best seller, and it spawned a movie that literally changed the American cultural landscape. The story of Mrs. Robinson and Benjamin and his love for her daughter Elaine was comic and explosive. Underneath it all was a keen and poignant recognition of genuine American angst.
If you are a reader/movie-goer who wonders what happened to Benjamin and Elaine after he invaded her wedding and ran off with her, your questions are now answered. “Home School” is set 11 years later, and Benjamin and Elaine…
Well, they are fully-entrenched suburban dwellers, a hard-working married couple with two children. They seem the stereotypical American couple of the 1970s. But this is, in some senses, “The Graduate” redux. The couple is home-schooling their children, and the local school board doesn’t like it. The Braddock’s need help.
So they send out the call to California and grandma Nan comes cross country to New York’s Westchester County to help out. Nan is, of course, “Mrs. Robinson. And so it begins.
“Home School” moves fast, supplies both wit and insight, and reads a lot like a screenplay. Especially the dialogue.
Remember the line in “The Graduate” which became central to the entirety of anti-establishment mantras? It was: “Plastics.”
Early on in “Home School,” when asked why she took her children out of school is educate them at home, Elaine replies: “We took them out to they wouldn’t grow up to be bankers.”
Right there, you know where you’re going in this novel. It’s a fast trip, one with admirable and sometimes breathtaking dialogue. Webb has an ear for reality and a mind full of things he wants to say.
His books after “The Graduate” weren’t as successful as that first avalanche of surprise. “Home School” is surprisingly fresh and effective, another avalanche, very much like the first. You just have to settle back and enjoy the ride.
Rating: 4 / 5
#3 by Daisy A. Alhades on April 23, 2010 - 11:57 pm
This book is a wonderful follow up to The Graduate with our favorite characters returning. Very well written and a fun story. Recommended.
Rating: 4 / 5
#4 by Jerika on April 24, 2010 - 1:46 am
That’s the question that kept occurring to me as I read this short-story-packaged-as-a-novel: why did we even need a sequel to a story that was wrapped up quite well in the first place?
It’s difficult to go into the other “why”s without spoiling too much, but they come thick and and fast from the very beginning: why would Mr. Robinson have left his house to Ben and Elaine? Why has Ben remained the weak-willed man-child he was in The Graduate, and apparently not grown as a character? Why so much back-and-forth repeating of each other’s lines of dialog? Why do Ben and Elaine’s young boys speak with the vocabulary, wisdom, and insight of 45-year-olds? Why would any halfway sane, reasonable person tolerate such incredible abuses by unwanted houseguests for even 10 minutes before calling the police? The whole thing comes off as a cheap and silly sitcom, with characters reduced to puppets. Another reviewer pointed out what an excellent job the first novel did of exploring themes of alienation and obsession, and giving the reader glimpse of the complicated inner workings of each of the characters. Why, then, has Mrs. Robinson been reduced here to a 1-dimensional stage villain? And why the horribly trite deus ex machina at the end? (Trust me – it makes no sense for at least 2 or 3 reasons.)
At least I checked it out from the library, so I don’t have to add “Why did I pay good money for this?” to my list.
Rating: 2 / 5
#5 by Michael P Mccullough on April 24, 2010 - 3:32 am
I had just read The Graduate and loved it, and was delighted to learn there was a sequel. Who hasn’t wondered what happened to those two after they rode away on that bus?
Well, not much, really. Here we find them living in New York homeschooling their children. Evidently that was controversial in 1973 or whenever this was set – it certainly isn’t controversial now – I have dozens of families as patients that home school their children.
Anyway – long story short (and this novel is fairly short) not much interesting happens here. This book was a disappointment, sorry to say.
Rating: 2 / 5