cover image Chain Gang Elementary

Chain Gang Elementary

Jonathan Grant. Thornbriar Press (www.thornbriarpress.com), $12.95 paper (344p) ISBN 978-0-9834921-0-8

In Grant's satirical novel, Richard Gray is a self-righteous newsletter editor and stay-at-home dad thrust into the local spotlight after assuming the presidency of the bitterly divided parent-teacher organization at his child's school. As president, Richard juggles the demands of overinvolved parents, the licentious PTO secretary, and his precocious son and emotionally frigid wife, all while waging war against Estelle Rutherford, the demagogic principal of Malliford Elementary, and her blatantly racist policies meant to protect the school's reputation. Although Grant provides trenchant criticisms of educational policy, much of his novel resembles an overripe soap opera. And while predictable and convenient plotting, inconsistent characterization, and sloppy exposition are saved by Grant's acerbic wit, in the end his novel is undermined by the specters of sexual abuse and murder that haunt his protagonist's past. A brief interlude in which Richard returns to his childhood home to attend his father's funeral and solve a dark crime from his youth is at once the most incongruous and most enticing portion of the novel. But once Grant has exposed Richard's dark history, none of the remaining twists and turns of this suburban intrigue seem equally important.