I really wanted much more from this book. Ben was such a flat character, and he was just really unlikable. I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never really did.

Like many of the books I own, it immediately became a shelf orphan, being repeatedly passed over for books that I had checked out from the library. I mean, they have a definite due date, where the one's I own can be read anytime, right? Of course the problem with this is that you miss reading some really good books sometimes

“Every choice is a step into the moral arena.”

I wasn’t really ready for another book set in a private school, but since In The Fall They Come Back came from the mind of American author Robert Bausch, I decided to take the plunge. Told in retrospect by Ben Jameson, who is now, twenty years later, a lawyer, this is the tale of two years spent teaching English to high school students. Freshly graduated, Ben needs “an emergency job” and needs money so that he can “save up for bigger and better things.” He takes the job teaching in Virginia at Glenn Acres Preparatory School, and for Ben, he admits even decades later, these two years “changed the world for me in ways I’m still contemplating.” The story examines the boundaries between teacher and student–when caring goes overboard and involvement becomes entanglement. I have a feeling that teachers who read this may identity (and wince) with some of the scenarios here as our (then) idealistic narrator makes some formidable errors.

This is a story about caring a little too much; or maybe about not caring enough. I really don’t know which.

It’s 1985 Ben is just 25 years old and lives with his extremely attractive girlfriend, Annie when he’s hired by the indomitable owner/headmistress of Glenn Acres, Mrs Creighton. The idiosyncratic nature of the school is immediately made clear through Mrs. Creighton’s behaviour with her dogs. They are locked up in her office at night and then the following morning, Mrs Creighton cleans up their poop. Only an owner could do this, and while this seems like a small observation, it’s indicative of how Mrs Creighton runs her school.

In the Fall they come back

Ben is hired on the spot with the caveat that he read his students’ journal pages: the pages that are supposed to be private and unread. He’s supposed to report anything troubling back to Mrs Creighton. Of course, this rings alarm bells for the reader, but Ben is young, needs a job, and is also inexperienced when it comes to employment.

It doesn’t take long for Ben to begin to wonder how “anybody could be a teacher for his whole life.” He also details the monumental burden of reading thousands of pages of student writing a week (a conservative estimate is 1,250 a week). So it’s not long before Ben finds himself not reading everything and making generalized comments in the margins. Ben forms a close relationship with a much older teacher, Professor Bible, and together they compare concerns about student George Meeker who bears the brunt of his father’s misplaced conceptions of masculinity.

Ben isn’t a sloucher; he genuinely wants to get his students involved, and he embarks on almost suicidal missions to ‘awaken’ his students’ moral consciences. He introduces the subject of Hitler and the Holocaust and then later, he invites the students to write about God.

While Ben’s choices make ‘sense’ as he explains them through his narratives, the reader also understands that Ben is treading on thin ice. According to Annie, who understands Ben all too well, he has a “Christ Complex,” and is deliberately placing “little traps” for himself by introducing such controversial subjects into the curriculum. Of course, Ben protests these accusations, but Annie is onto something as it turns out, and for this reader, it’s clear that Ben’s idealism contains a streak of subconscious self-sabotage when it comes to imagining teaching as a life long career. It’s also clear that something is going to go horribly wrong….

Bausch tells us that what happens is based on a “true story,” and I believe it. There’s the sense of lingering pain in the tragedy that takes place, and the novel’s strength lies in the sincerity of the narrative voice. The intriguing and paradoxical thing here is while the narrative voice is sincere, it isn’t always honest. Take Ben’s comments, for example, about Annie who is also “smirking.” Yes, Ben wants to ‘open’ students’ mind with the subject of the Holocaust, but that also allows him to sit and watch films in the classroom for hours on end. And then there’s the beautiful Leslie, and while Ben professes to have no sexual feelings for her whatsoever, he certainly crosses more than one line in this relationship.

Ultimately, the novel wrestles with moral questions regarding the teacher’s role in student lives. Mrs Creighton sets Ben on a disastrous mission when she asks him to read the students’ private journals. Where is the cut-off when it comes to involvement and concerns? Over the novel, there lingers the sense that still, twenty years later, Ben is attempting to justify his actions, and while this justification fails, perhaps this is a stronger novel because of Ben’s failure to convince the reader and himself.

Review copy

3.5 stars

Most teachers, regardless of how old you are when you come to the profession, feels like Ben does: you want to Change Lives. You want to Make and Impact. You want to be the sort of teacher who Affects your students in capital letters. 

It takes Ben about two years to realize that his goal is Sisyphean on the best days. 

He tells his story twenty years after it happened, when he is an attorney, having left teaching after those first wto years. He doesn't quit the job because of the events he tells us about - he always intended to taech for a couple of years before going to law school - and you can feel the ensuing two decades of perspective he gained. 

Ben makes many mistakes, and Robert Bausch does a pretty solid job of showing his not exactly naïveté, but more his blind optimism. Ben doesn't so much pick three particular students to impact as he finds himself drawn to them in ways he isn't his other kids. Unfortunately, that blind optimism causes him to make some mistakes, particularly with one of the students. He puts himself in a precarious position to the point that those intentions he has to affect positive change might not happen because he may not be around. 

One of my favorite lines from this book comes at the end, as Ben reflects on his time at Glenn Acres. He considers the profession he left and observes that "maybe that is what a really good teachre is, finally: a man or woman with only the best intentions, bearing gifts." As Basuch shows, Ben struggles with trying to force some of his gifts into something they aren't. He envisions himself a savior (his girlfriend Annie accuses him of having a Christ complex), and he manipulates circumstances and people to make that vision come true. At the same time, though, his intentions are true. Teaching may have been a temporary gig, but nonetheless it's one he took seriously. 

There are occasional lapses in pacing, and some of the story is a bit too easily predicted. I didn't always like Ben, but I'm okay with that. I felt like Bausch didn't want me to always like Ben. Heck, Ben didn't always like himself. That twenty-year perspective shows in his occasional wry observations about himself. That message - that we are our own best students - may be obvious, but it's a lesson that must be learned.

Review link to be added once review has been edited and published.

I'm a sucker for school novels. Private schools, private colleges on the East Coast, quads, lecture halls.....

In the Fall, When They Come Back is the story of Ben Jameson, reflecting on his two years of teaching at a private school in Northern Virginia. It has all the elements of what I would normally like but instead, I felt like I was reading about something who was trying too hard to be Dead Poet's Society with little gross teacher-student thing. The long-winded description of one of the students was too predatory for my taste, and well..come on.

All in all, it's ...not that great of a story. It's boring, banal and really....why?

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Ben Jameson wants a break from studying. He has just graduated from college and despite excellent LSAT scores, he is not ready to apply to law school. Little does he know, an intense education awaits him at Glenn Acres Preparatory School, where he has been hired to teach writing. The students at Glenn Acres tend to be troubled, spoiled or criminal, a potentially dangerous situation for a teacher who has difficulty distinguishing between educator and savior. Thus the cause of the drama and the question of how far is too far when getting involved in a student’s life?

In the Fall they Come Back begins with seasoned author Robert Bausch stating the story was inspired by true events. Although fiction, it reads like a memoir and constantly makes the reader question how much is true and how much is artistic expression. Sometimes I wanted to hug Ben Jameson and sometimes I wanted to smack him. Whether you find Ben sympathetic or frustrating, it makes for a compelling read.

this novel kept me on the edge of my chair from its engaging beginning to its surprising end. The sensitivity and emotions created throughout the story by the main character, kept me totally engaged.

I DNF this when it was first published. I found Ben unappealing and inappropriate at the time and the passage of years has only made some of his observations about his students even...well, let's just say he's a creep. This is overly long.

In the Fall they come Back is a story about a young English teacher in a private school and his relationships with his students and fellow teachers. He was never taught how to teach, how to write a lesson plan and how to interact with his students. This leads to some very interesting discussions for journal writing and his over involvement with three of his students. The story is very well written, compelling and sticks with the reader long after finishing the book.

I was unable to finish this book and, as such, I will not be posting a full review on my blog. Thank you for the opportunity.

This book was so disappointing and strangely awful. The narrator is oddly callow—not just in his recollections but in his understanding of the events he recounts. Most of the characters are flat and uninteresting, particularly the female ones.

'When the thing that ultimately ruins you has begun, you don’t necessarily recognize it at the outset. In fact, you might not notice it at all.'

Ben Jameson has begun teaching at a small private school in Northern Virginia, and he notices many things about his students, unlike seasoned teachers that have learned to look past these very alarming realities, he knows he must step in. Most people are familiar with the aphorisms about good intentions, so I’ll spare you. Three students have drawn the intense focus of his ‘calling’, for what sort of teacher would he be if lessons remained only in the schools classroom and corridors? How can a teacher guide their students if they’re distracted by abuses at home, too precocious and vain in their beauty or choosing to remain mute? It won’t be easy, but missions of salvation rarely are.

Over time he reaches each student with a quiet wisdom, drawing them out in lessons and writing , one involving about Hitler and the holocaust, hoping to inspire a particular student to see abuse for what it is. The trouble with young minds, as much as old, is you can guide them where you will but you cannot predict the turns thoughts will take, you can’t control what lessons they will absorb. Not even the most straight forward approach can predict the weather of the mind.

Just when he starts to make progress with one student, another demands his attention, a precious ‘dangerous’, beautiful young woman. What is on the surface doesn’t always belie what lies beneath, as with Leslie. A young idealistic teacher of 25 should tread lightly with a young girl, as much as he is learning that his teaching methods draw too much attention. Why not stick to the formulaic old ideas, the safe lessons. While it isn’t so much about subjects being taught, it’s disheartening how chained teachers are in instructing students in 1980’s (when this story takes place) and more so now. It’s as if the world prefers to prevent any ‘awakening’ minds.

Immediately with George I thought, this can’t be such an easy fix. Violence and anger have a mighty reach, abuse cannot be stopped by a few words- if only… It’s not necessarily about salvation, more a lessening? A hand reached out to a drowning boy, someone to say “you’re not a failure”. I must point out though, abuse is not a liberal nor conservative act- like most rotten things under the sun, it’s unbiased. The world is full of young men like George, but teachers put themselves at such a risk to appear human and they learn early in their careers not get too close. What a loss for the world.

Leslie got to me, girls aren’t wild and ‘dangerous’ without reason. There is a smug pride as Ben scratches the surface of this troubled young woman, but as with all things he learns never to gloat or call victory too soon. Too, he gets Suzanne to release her voice through writing poetry. He tries so hard to breathe life and strength into the lost students, to see past their retreating or abrasive manner and reach the core of their being to lift them. There are wins and losses, and one can’t know if having remained unmoved and distant might have been better. We can never know what never was, only the outcome of the actions we do chose.

School is an ever evolving experiment, private or public. Just How much are teachers allowed to get involved? Equally punished for showing humanity and for ignoring the obvious- it’s a never-ending tug of war. A teacher is never one thing. It’s curious comparing a veteran teacher to the fresh hope of a newbie. Ben learns the hard way how getting involved is a double edged sword. It’s a quiet novel, until the end.

Publication Date: December 12, 2017

Bloomsbury USA

A riveting book, set at a private school in VA in the 1980s, the author takes us on his journey of two years teaching there, and the students that affected his life forever. It is haunting, and beautifully written. I will read almost anything set at a school, and this was unlike one I've ever read before. It is unusual to hear from a teacher's point of view, and I enjoyed it. But I can only imagine how much richer it would have been to hear from the students themselves (and not just in the form of their journals, which the author shares with us via the narrator). I didn't like the main character. He made so many bad decisions, and didn't blame any one else for the problems he was causing, thinking himself a savior instead of an English teacher.

I usually enjoy campus books. However, the narrator of this novel is so sexist and despicable right out of the gate, that I quickly bailed.

If The Secret History’s Richard Papen taught in a high school, it would be this book. And like The Secret History, this book does contain flawed characters.

I found the characters in this book to be somewhat difficult to like. The main character, Ben, was a visionary. He believed that he could make a difference in the lives of his students. But because of his involvement or too much of his involvement, he gets into trouble. What I appreciate about this book is that it can generate discussion about student/teacher relationships. Because of Ben’s idealistic tendencies, he follows his heart too often. The problem with this is that he doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions. Reading about Ben’s idealistic thoughts felt tremendously tedious. It was also slightly weird (I won't go into details, but he made some *CREEPY* comment about a student). He was also judgmental and mostly seeing things in black and white, which should've gone against his character.

As I was reading this book, at some point, I realized that it seemed to drag on (and on). This book was awfully long and I can’t help but feel better each time I had to put the book down. I kept forcing myself to read this but I just couldn’t finish it. This book wasn’t bad. In fact, it was pretty engaging! However, I don’t think this book is for me.

I'm not sure if I'm missing something in this book, but the blurb already gives you an idea what the book is about (and the students whom Ben wanted to help).

1 star--I didn't like it.

I requested this book from Netgalley because I love books in school settings. I also used to teach high school English, so I thought this would be a fun read. That wasn't the case for me; I greatly disliked the narrator of this book and found it overall pretty dull.

I should have stopped reading after the first chapter, where the narrator spends more than one paragraph describing how beautiful one of his female students is. And that's my biggest objection here--the narrator is a creep. I don't care if the student was 18 and he's 25--he's still a creep. He's also a jerk, describing an overweight woman as a "manatee in human skin" and declaring that all women can't keep secrets.

He's lazy as well, creating no lesson plans and admitting he doesn't like assigning his students work because then he'll have to grade it. He oversteps the bounds (time and time again) of what's appropriate for a teacher, and it's pretty uncomfortable reading. Despite these things, the other faculty and students all seem to love him and lavish praise on him for his teaching skills! Are these the delusions of an unbalanced mind? Perhaps, but it's not clear from the narrative. In fact, it seems like we're supposed to like the narrator.

All this would be OK if the book were interesting (I do, in fact, like an unreliable or unlikeable narrator), but to me it wasn't. Is there any bigger cliche than an older male teacher/professor falling in love with a student? Snooze. The writing is banal at best (a reflection of the narrator's mind, probably), and I actually flipped to the copyright page to make sure this wasn't self published (or an Amazon imprint!) at one point. Nothing much happens here, and I'm sorry I wasted my time reading this.

I received this review copy from the publisher on NetGalley. Thanks for the opportunity to read and review; I appreciate it!

Wonderful as usual from Isabel Allende. She is one of my favorite writers and did not disappoint with this story. It was moving and touching and a page turner from beginning to end. Definitely I book I would reread again. Thanks to net galley for the ARC.

Ben Jameson is fresh out of graduate school when he lands a teaching job at a small private school in Northern Virginia, Glenn Acres Preparatory Academy. It doesn't matter that he didn't pursue education as a course of study while in college, and never really thought of himself as a teacher—the school needs an English teacher and he needs a job. He doesn't think this is what he'll want to do for the rest of his life, but he's fine with that.

He finds the atmosphere at Glenn Acres a little unorthodox, but that doesn't bother him, because his teaching methods aren't quite by the book, either. (At one point the head of the school has to remind him that he needs actual lesson plans, because the state mandates students learn some specific things, not just participate in discussions about writing.) Ben is tremendously idealistic, it's not long before he thinks this job may be a noble calling of sorts, one that will allow him to make a difference in young people's lives.

When Ben is told by his colleagues that one of his students is being physically abused, and encouraged to watch over him, Ben cannot sit idly by and allow this to continue to happen. Even though his colleagues tried unsuccessfully to intervene in the past, Ben believes he must get involved and he must save this boy. Instead of helping, he makes even more of a mess of the situation, causing trouble for the school, and causing him to have to act contrary to what he feels he should do if he has any hope of keeping his job and keeping the student in school.

This idealism happens a few more times for Ben, once in the case of a withdrawn, mute, and psychologically damaged student, and another time in dealing with a precocious troublemaker who is over 18, but is bound and determined to graduate anyway, even if she hasn't to date. In each case, Ben feels compelled to do the right thing, even if he has no idea what the right thing really is, and even if his blundering actually makes things worse rather than better.

"This is not a story about teaching. Nor is it about education, or school, although most of what happened started in a school. This is a story about caring a little too much; or maybe about not caring enough. I really don't know which. The only thing I know for certain is that I wish a lot of it did not happen."

Reading other people's reviews of Robert Bausch's In the Fall They Come Back leads me to wonder if I completely missed the point of the book, because I really didn't like this at all. While I saw the point he was trying to make relative to the fact that the best of intentions is often not enough to change things the way we want to, and how idealism can sometimes be a harmful thing, I found much of this book tremendously predictable, and many instances in which if people had just said what they meant, or what needed to be said, chaos in some cases might be avoided.

I also found the description of the school and its administration to be very far-fetched; while this private school might not have had to hew to all of the same rules and regulations public schools did, I found it hard to believe that a school which allowed two aged dogs to do their business in classrooms would actually be able to operate. I found many of the characters to be unlikable, even the main character, whom you just couldn't believe could be so stupid over and over again, yet his desire to give, to make a difference, blinds him.

Bausch is a storyteller with a strong body of work, yet I found this book to be one of his weakest, plus it runs far longer than it should. However, since many other reviewers have loved this book, you may want to see if you hew closer to their opinions than mine, which might be the mark of a clueless reader rather than an astute one.

NetGalley and Bloomsbury USA provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

This book was soooo good. So impressed. Likable characters, but you can see obvious flaws. Hightly recommend this book.