Sam Burcher reviews a contemporary novel based on private school education.

In his debut novel Private Privilege, old-Harrovian Simon Astaire's alma mater is thinly veiled as Montgomery House. It is through the medium of his book that I find myself vicariously returning to a world of Sunday exeats, black tails and boaters, and those bumpy rides to Harrow-on-the-Hill station on the Metropolitan line to Middlesex, on London's outermost margins to attend Harrow School Speech Day. 

I can never be sure what happened to my brother Julien during his time at Harrow, which was concurrent with the story told here, because he seldom talks about it. However, Simon Astaire's peripatetic tale has undoubtedly demystified some of my private perceptions of public school education.

The central character Samuel Alexander, note his initials match the author's, is sent away from home at 13 to begin a life at Montgomery. From day one, he is greeted with an oppressive regime of fagging, toshing, and bullying by older boys as the daily norm. It comes as no surprise that this shockingly loveless environment brings out the worst in the parentless, peer-patrolled community. Calculated acts of rebellion such as graffiti, theft, truancy, and drug taking intensify to arson and even suicide, all of which are hushed up by the school. Clearly, what happens on the Hill stays there.

Sadly, this sort of behaviour is characteristic of any socially deprived group. Even if Astaire has used poetic license to exaggerate the frequency of the rage against the educational machine, the real tragedy here is its reliance on one final and punitive model for coping with troubled children. Those caught in desperate acts of sabotage are subject to instant expulsion, and ultimately seen as pariahs that have cast an irredeemable stain on the good name of their family and the school.

Simon Astaire weighs these matters without flinching and lets the scales rest where they might. And, to his credit, he somehow whips the lighter-hearted, intimate and challenging moments of a teenager's life into a delightful soufflé that doesn't disappoint. At a deeper level, the dense dry shadows of parental abadonmnent express the palpable fear in kinetic emotions charged by a process of remembering and letting go. This is a book that breathes with you.

For the reader, an assumption of some musical knowledge is a given and the author gives the reader just the title and the artist of his hero's songs of innocence and experience. This allows the reader to assign their own interpretation of words, rhythms, nuances and meanings to the moment. It's a welcome change from the authors who irritatingly rework entire verses of well known songs for fear of breaking music copyright laws. Or those who in the spirit of J R R Tolkein unravel seemingly endless verses to unknown tunes that at once destroy the aural landscape that a song intends to create.

Another uplifting aspect of this interactive read is its simplicity. It doesn't try to mislead you with an unassailable language that has the more average intellectuals amongst us reaching for our dictionaries or simply missing out on the full significance of the words. It wasn't until page 191 that I felt the urge to have a quick search on the internet to clarify the meaning of the word "Stygian." As it turned out, it was nothing to do with my imaginative reinterpretation of Rod Steiger and his famous role as the racist policeman in the movie "In The Heat of the Night". Although, dark themes of bigotry and violence in relation to class are prevalent here too.

There is no doubt that Simon Astaire's upfront, but finely drawn style will find its way onto the silver screen. It's just a question of when, not if. Here, he gives Lindsay Anderson's powerful film "If" a respectful nod, from which forms yet more surreal images of the shape shifting and shamanic psyche of a schoolboy torn from his roots and situated in a conditional culture where loneliness and trauma reigns, and Matron is the only succour. The task of raising public consciousness about the sticky subject of adolescent boys from an insiders view of an `establishment' institution is a tricky one. But one which the author manages by using a literary camera obscura that allows him to entertain whilst asking questions that go beyond mere childhood survival.

For more information see:  Spellbinding Media - Private Privilege page: http://www.spellbindingmedia.co.uk/private-privilege-simon-astaire-ebook-9781909964020/