BelEdit Book Reviews
Havoc is an absorbing story set in 1984 in a ramshackle English boarding school where the social cohesion is crumbling faster than the damp bricks. Teetering on the border between pathos and humour, Havoc is an insular, ‘domestic’ story that punches above its weight.
Desperate to escape the small community on a Scottish island where her family has been disgraced, 16-year-old Ida applies for a place in a remote boarding school, St. Anne’s, on the south English coast.
A fragile, closed community in crisis
St. Anne’s is falling apart, what with its unruly pupils, dispirited teachers, and its chaotic buildings in an advanced state of disrepair. There’s no money, and the school is reduced to accepting pupils (and teachers) nobody else wants. The Cold War wages and the menace of a nuclear attack looms; the students are called to regular bomb drills.
Ida’s arrival coincides with that of a new teacher, Matthew Langfield. The presence of a young male teacher is a somewhat welcome buzz for both the pupils and the mostly female staff, but geography teacher Eleanor Alston suspects that he is not all he claims to be.
She also suspects that one of the girls, Diane, is not well. Then Diane collapses in a fit, sparking the spread of a mysterious illness among the pupils. As Diane gets sicker and more pupils succumb while doctors and police try to track the source of their illness, rumours proliferate. Is there a poisoner in their midst?
Meanwhile, Ida has to share a room with the school’s most disreputable pupil, Louise.
A quiet little story with a big impact
Havoc does not feel like a ‘big’ novel — its setting is a small school community and while the events are dramatic, they are quietly so, and the emotions are subdued. But it packs an emotional punch. Although its characters are, at least in their own perception, small and rather lost, I found myself becoming increasingly concerned about and attached to them. To Ida, struggling to make sense of a world where everything around her is dysfunctional. To Eleanor, quietly efficient but secretly beaten down by a broken engagement and hopelessness for her future. To Louise, facing daily unhappiness with humour and defiant resilience. To Matthew, trying to fight off self-loathing. Oh, all of them really. Dr Halliwell, Miss Christie, April, Vera… Each character is unique and hugely human.
It’s one of those books you wish would never end, with characters you know you won’t easily forget, where you finish the last page worrying about them all.
My thanks to the publisher, author and Netgalley for giving me an ARC. All my reviews are 100% honest and unbiased, regardless of how I acquire the book.
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