This is an inventive book. You know from the start that a bad thing has happened, because you are told, What you spend quite a lot of the book doing is working out what the bad thing is and who does it. Alex arrives in Edinburgh as a stand in teacher at a unit for children who have been taken out of mainstream school. The main class we hear about is the top form, the 5 who are 15 ish. She isn't an experienced teacher, and these 5 are, in some ways, natural trouble makers, they don;t make things easy. But she seems to muddle through. Alex is in Edinburgh because she's running away from an horrific event in her recent past and the kids soon start tom wheedle it out of her. And so she breaks the 4th wall and tells them some of it. Along side this she goes through some Greek plays with them, and their reactions to the different situations in the plays in interesting.
I'm not familiar with the plays, so have the pleasure of discovering something of them as well as the children. The bad thing that happens is quite startling and the aftermath has significant impact on the children and Alex.
I'm not sure I found Alex entirely convincing, but then if your life is torn apart I'm not sure that I;d be entirely self-consistent either. ( )

Page turning enough - I stayed up late to finish it ... but was then somewhat underwhelmed as well as tired.

Concerns the education, through the medium of Greek tragedy, by a young former theatrical director-turned-drama-teacher/therapist, at an Edinburgh 'Unit' of a group of children excluded from mainstream schools. Parallel themes (fate, revenge) rather than events (nobody marries his mother here).

The characters are economically drawn, the learning worn lightly, the enigmas deftly revealed. I just wanted it to add up to more, not less than the sum of its parts. ( )

From the very first page, The Amber Fury by Natalie Haynes promises the reader that something dreadful happened, and from there on readers will be turning the pages to find out exactly what had happened. With a suspenseful narrative, where the past and present are interwoven carefully together, Haynes gives readers the opportunity to enjoy a riveting tale that will keep them glued to their seats for the duration of the novel.

It took me a while to actually get to the book (overworked, underpaid, usual human nonsense that gets in the way of getting a book read), but I must say that when I finally had the opportunity to sit down and read The Amber Fury that I was swept away by the beautiful prose and exciting plot. The character development is also quite marvelous, not to mention that they aren't stereotypical characters, which is always a plus for reviewers.
What I particularly enjoyed was how carefully Haynes had used mythology to develop the story. The mythology is accurate, not overused like some authors tend to do, but most of all, it compliments the plot.

All in all, it's a really good book and I'm sorry I waited so long to get to it. Readers who are in the mood for a suspenseful thriller will want to get their hands on The Amber Fury, and I must admit that I'll be keeping my eye open for more of Natalie Haynes' future works.

(review originally posted on www.killeraphrodite.com) ( )

Page turning enough - I stayed up late to finish it ... but was then somewhat underwhelmed as well as tired.

Concerns the education, through the medium of Greek tragedy, by a young former theatrical director-turned-drama-teacher/therapist, at an Edinburgh 'Unit' of a group of children excluded from mainstream schools. Parallel themes (fate, revenge) rather than events (nobody marries his mother here).

The characters are economically drawn, the learning worn lightly, the enigmas deftly revealed. I just wanted it to add up to more, not less than the sum of its parts. ( )

I've always thought I would hate being a teacher, and then along comes this book that reminds me all over again why that is. Set in a pupil referral unit in Edinburgh, it's the story of Alex, recently bereaved in shocking circumstances, turning her hand to teaching in the most testing of environments, having had a previous career in theatre.

I loved the depiction of the children in the unit - they come to life on the page with their truculence and belligerence - typical teenagers with added menace. Alex was more tricky to get my head round - OK so she initially struggles to control the class, but she is depicted as an utter mess physically and emotionally and yet she gets to grips with them and even ends up being offered the headship. I mean - what was that all about? I was expecting that development to be significant in some way, in terms of the way the plot developed, but as far as I can see it wasn't. It was a book that had me gripped and yet I was expecting twists that weren't there. It was surprisingly straightforward, such that as I turned the last page I felt almost cheated.

That said, it was a book that exerted a gravitational pull - always a pleasure to settle down with , and I don't think I've ever read anything quite like it in terms of its setting and theme. And what a talented writer - the prose was always spot on with its moments of humour (the bit about the lawyer and his "inner bunny" and the comment that "I never understand why people make jokes about the food on trains being bad. They have three flavours of crisps on that train"). Not only that, I'll feel an awful lot more confident on quiz questions about Greek tragedies in future - bring them on. ( )