The Headmaster's Wife

A layered story of love, unbearable loss, and grief.Wonderful read Tragic unexpected turn of events in the course of the story A sad story really beautifully written Scenery of Eastern Canada beautifully described Easy flowing read, once you start, you just want to move on and get to the outcome Intriguing Story seems quite logical, until it takes a turn 4.5 Recommended And thanks to and my friends, for I found this book here what a grand source of books GR is Like his father before him, Arthur [...]

I could not put it down This was a gripping novel about how we deal with grief and what it does to tear us apart As I got into the first part of the book, I wasn t sure I liked the way it was going, but it was written so well, I could stop reading Thenack, about halfway through it takes a turn I was not expecting at all It ended up being a great read, and offers a lot of food for thought on what might have been if just any one of the circumstances for the main characters had been differentwe nev [...]

So, up until the last few pages, I was thinking this would be a four star read It was well written and well craftedup until the end, where, it seems, the author ran out of interest in telling this story and just abruptly closed it Very odd.

4 and 3 4 Stars The Headmaster s Wife is truly a great and unique read It twists and turns like a thriller but deals with grief and loss at the same time I ve never read anything like this I don t want to give away too much because it is best to go into this novel not knowing anything I never would have read this but two people outside of had recommended it to me The first time someone told me about it I saw the cover and passed I m big on covers and the cover is so blah and made me think it was [...]

There is no doubt that the weather here the last few days made the setting for this book really stand out Fallish, cool weather, back to school and this story that takes place at an insular prep school the Northeast.Loved how the author drops the reader right into the middle of the story and how aware we are of that but not of what has actually happened Quite a jolt with the surprise at the end of the first part.The closed world of a live in school, where expectations are passed from father to s [...]

The Headmaster s Wife Simply Stunning Like all good stories this has a beginning a middle and an end and have called the three parts Acrimony, Expectations and After just to help us out I am sure there will be plenty of people that will try and pigeon hole this book, as literary or psychological thriller but I am adding a new pigeon hole its bloody good.Arthur Winthrop is a middle aged headmaster of an elite school in Vermont who is found running naked through New York s Central Park on a cold a [...]

This book is cleverly written I found it unusual in the fact there was no build up to the story, the beginning places you slap dab in the middle of it The prose is sparse but beautiful Hard to put down I will definitely read of Mr Greene s books.

This is a beautifully told story of love and loss and the choices we make in life It opens with the Headmaster of a prestigious but insular Vermont school, Arthur Winthrop, being found wandering naked in New York s Central Park Taken into custody by the police he slowly tells them how his life has spiraled out of control due to an obsessive love affair Half way through the book, the story switches to the Headmaster s wife Elizabeth and we gradually learn of her and Arthur s stories and what has [...]

The Headmaster s Wife is about love, class, family, and expectations, but it is ultimately a story about how people grieve A novel in three parts, the first part is told from the point of view of Arthur Winthrop, headmaster of an elite prep school in Vermont called Lancaster The second part of the story is told from the point of view of his wife, Elizabeth, and she presents a slightly different version of events for us to consider The third and final part is the denouement, and it manages to be [...]

This story is divided into three parts Acrimony, Expectations and After The headmaster narrates the first part and the other two are narrated in the third person describing events from a different perspective When I began reading the headmaster s story I was concerned by what he was doing and worried where the story was headed By the end of his narrative I was shocked by the events that had unfolded While reading Expectations and then After the reader gains insight about events described in part [...]

This book has a lot of shallow things going for it attractive cover, interesting sounding premise hello it s set at a boarding school in Vermont , good author blurbs, double spaced text on smallish pages to make you think you re a really good and fast reader but then it falls flat in all the important ways I thought it was pretty obvious from the start that Arthur is an unreliable narrator, and there s just nothing subtle in the story I didn t care about any of the characters not in the I think [...]

Excellent Worthy tale and so well told I love Mr Greene s writing and will look for his previous books now This would make a great movie

Oh, so bad, it made me sad I had been intrigued by reviews of this novel that noted the three different perspectives from which the story is told, how each perspective informs the previous one so that readers gained new understandings of the characters The reviews were generous In spite of quickly getting the sense that this novel was not going to go anywhere near where I d hoped, I kept reading because I really kept hoping for something However, this novel is among those that I sadly have wast [...]

Most reviews say that the book is about grief and loss While that is true, it is a story of our choices and justifications for those choices and how they lead to grief Elizabeth s the titular Headmaster s Wife life is heartbreaking not because of the big thing that is revealed in the book but because of the bad choices she makes Choices she makes for comfort and out of loneliness instead of belief in those decisions So sad Read the book for the examination of a life not lived to the full potent [...]

The Headmaster s Wife begins as what appears to be a rather conventional tale of a headmaster s mid life crisis involving an affair with a student and the story of his troubled marriage It was so conventional, in fact, that I wondered why I was continuing to read it, but the writing was so good that it kept me with the story I am very glad it did because as the reader finishes part one, narrated by the headmaster, and ventures on into parts two and three, narrated by different characters, the no [...]

I would have given this 5 stars except it bordered on a novella No matter how large the publisher s make the font, it s clear that this fantastic little read is no than a 6 hour pleasure But what a pleasure it is Greene s offering is a fresh take on the unreliable narrator just when you thought it couldn t happen Every character rang true The pace was perfect Descriptions are lush This is a confection worth full price now Don t wait.

The Headmaster s Wife by Thomas Christopher Greene is written in a beautiful style that makes the reading of this book compelling Greene has a way with words that hooks the reader from the first pages The plot, however, is not as well considered as I would have liked and I was disappointed by the denouement It seemed like a deus ex machina, and not at all realistic.The book starts out with Arthur Winthrop, Headmaster of The Lancaster School in Vermont, a prestigious boarding school, found wander [...]

I recently finished reading The Headmaster s Wife by Thomas Christopher Greene I admit to being somewhat at a loss on how to review this book This is a book told by multiple voices and it is incumbent on the reader to determine what is true and what is an altered perception of reality The setting is the elite world of the private New England prep school Lancaster, in Vermont Arthur Winthrop is Lancaster s headmaster, a position that his father held before him When the book opens, Arthur is found [...]

Thomas Christopher Greene s writing was done beautifully I read the acknowledgments part and it said that he wrote this book for his second daughter who was born early and died If I had known that when I was going in to read the book I would have had a different mindset As it was this was a very complex story that was well written.Greene writes in a way that draws in the reader However, the plot seemed confusing to me and I feel as though I didn t understand the message of the story properly and [...]

The question above this box asks, What did you think Hmmmm This book rendered me unable to think I can t figure out why I don t have the skills to step back from the story and analyze it objectively, to understand how the author put the pieces together so skillfully I don t know why it works so well, but it is a story like no other story I have ever read and I ve read a lot of stories.I believe the reader is drawn in by the oddity of the opening scene, and pulled along through the story by the d [...]

I really liked the first part of this book Acrimony It was quite brilliantly written and ends with a real a ha moment For me, the story could have ended there, as a short novella Enough is hinted at that the reader can fill in the missing pieces and put the story together The second part Expectations seems unnecessary and spells it all out too methodically Like Greene didn t think the reader would be smart enough to put it together without an explanation And I found the third section After compl [...]

Here s what happens when I really love a book and don t want it to end I race through, and then, read backwards i reread the last chapters in reverse order so I can savor what I was too impatient to slowly read the first time And that s exactly what I did with The Headmaster s Wife.I love how character s tell their stories, but things that happen to them can make them unreliable narrators We tell our lives through our own personal lenses, but sometimes those lenses get distorted We cannot bear t [...]

This is truly an absorbing psychological study of how fast life moves while personal loss, life changes and love abruptly manifests and dissipates in a rash of time The three chapters of the book demonstrates how personal values will alter ones life drastically in the form of both good and bad or right in the middle This unique New England Prep school mystery is definitely going to be one of my top favorites for 2014.

This story pulled me in right away, I was intrigued It is definitely a story of grief While it isn t a thriller, the suspense is built around the chain of events that led to what happened to Arthur and why he was found walking naked in Central Park It s an interesting story and I enjoyed it.

Starts of being about one thing, then takes a turn And not, for me, a particularly pleasing one It wasn t the novel I thought it was I don t usually mind that too much, but the second half of the book was very bland More of an affair to forget than one to remember.

This is a short tale about three people and presented by each It s NYC Arthur, presently sits in the police station He has been arrested for being naked in the park There he sits in oversize clothes telling the officers how he came to be there Just as I am settling in and I m good with the story so far, part two begins Meet Elizabeth, she is Arthur s wife Whoa Sharp right with no warning signs ahead Within our two narratives the third person, though briefly there, his haunting presence is key He [...]

Received ARC courtesy of giveawayThis book is a definite must read I would put it down for a few minutes to do something else and be drawn right back to it There are so many layers to this novel relationships between husbands and wives, mothers and sons, fathers and sons, employer and employee, boyfriend and girlfriend Then there are the images of snow and rivers and coldness Then comes madness sanity, love hate, life death.This is a novel that you will continue to think about long after you ve [...]

Sue Loved this book Enjoyed that the book was written from three different perspectives Eager to read by this author 19 hours, 40 min ago delete

Great Mystery Mystery, dreams, desires and madness makes this book an incredible story It is so well written and the twist amazing

Woww there was a different and interesting story I went into this book without having read any of the reviews and had no idea what it was about except for the blurb on the back It was not at all what I was expecting Well, the first part of the book was and had it continued down that course it still would have been good I had a niggling feeling while reading that there was to the narrative that was flowing below the surface I don t know if it was my intuition or the author was just really good a [...]