My first book of 2026. I wanted something slow and literary that I could linger on through the holidays, and The English Teacher was just the ticket.
About The English Teacher
Fifteen years ago, Vida Avery arrived at the elite Fayer Academy alone and pregnant. She has since become a fixture and one of the best teachers Fayer has ever had. By living on campus, on an island off the New England coast, Vida has cocooned herself and her son, Peter, from the outside world and from an inside secret. For years she has lived largely through the books she teaches, but when she accepts the impulsive marriage proposal of ardent widower Tom Belou, the prescribed life Vida has constructed is swiftly dismantled.
~ Synopsis from goodreads
My Review
This book was a bit of a mixed bag for me. There were some portions of it that I absolutely loved (such as the literary references). The English teacher Vida is teaching Tess of the d’Urbervilles to her class. As she teaches, she gets sucked back into past traumas, and there are some beautiful sections of the book where she identifies the parallels between her life and Tess.
Vida is in a bit of a crossroads in her life. After living a lifetime of single motherhood, she suddenly finds herself thrust into domestic life when she marries Tom. The expectations on her – cooking, bonding with stepkids, a burgeoning sex life all seem too much for her, and she buries herself in literature and teaching her class.
She seems to regret her impulsive marriage.
“What had she done? ” she keeps asking herself. She wished she’d never said she loved him. She was just being polite, returning the compliment late one evening.
Her son Peter, on the other hand, loves this opportunity to be a part of a larger family, have siblings, but he also struggles in his own way to fit in with his new siblings, as well as his friends in school. It’s hard having a teacher be your mom.
Things come to a head when their dog dies of old age. What should be normal grieving and moving on, becomes a crisis situation, and the start of Vida’s unraveling. Gradually, we come to know of her traumas (which honestly is not that much of a suspense), and the book comes to a close with some sort of resolution from all sides.
While overall, I loved the book, I had some problems with its pacing. It moves at a glacial pace, and there’s whole sections of the book just inside the heads of Peter and Vida, which normally I wouldn’t have minded so much. But there wasn’t enough meat to the plot. So many unanswered questions. Why does Vida marry Tom? He just seems like a placeholder in the book, with no clear developed character of his own. He’s supposed to be a better version of Angel from Tess of the d’Urbervilles, and yes, he is a nice man. But that’s pretty much all I could get out of him, which makes the happy ending seem a bit absurd and tacked on.
Despite its problems though, I still liked the book. It’s well written and introspective. I definitely want to try more books from Lily King. I love her writing style.
Have you read any of her books? Which one would you recommend to me?
