Stand Before Your God - by Paul Watkins (Paperback)

About the Book

This true account of coming of age in an English boarding school, by an acclaimed young writer, is reminiscent of such books as A Separate Peace and The Catcher in the Rye. "Strong and evocative. . . smoothly written. . . romantic".--The New York Times Book Review.

Book Synopsis

In this enthralling and sometimes harrowing memoir, the acclaimed author of The Promise of Light gives us a masterly companion to such classics as Brideshead Revisited and A Separate Peace.

At the age of seven, Paul Watkins was roughly transplanted from his home in Rhode Island to England's Dragon School. He was greeted by a delegation of bullies who, in time, would become his friends and whose rules would become his own. For at Dragon, and later at Eton, "there was no middle ground. You could not go here and come out not caring one way or the other. You had to stand before your God and commit."

Here are the masters who paddle boys for small infractions and then offer them sweets; the seniors who pamper pretty favorites and subject all others to humiliating servitude; the deep friendships and sudden, devastating betrayals. Above all, here is the exhilaration of a boy discovering own capacities for learning and creativity, in a book that conveys with astonishing insight the pangs of growing up.

Review Quotes

"The literature of school includes such classics as Tom Brown's School Days and Goodbye, Mr. Chips. No one has ever told it so well from the student's point of view as Paul Watkins." -- Denver Post

"Strong and evocative. . . smoothly written. . . romantic."--The New York Times Book Review.

About the Author

Educated at Eton and Yale, Paul Watkins has written five novels. His first novel, Night Over Day Over Night, was nominated for the Booker Prize. His second novel, Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn, won the Encore Prize. He lives in new Jersey, where he is writer-in-residence at Peddie School, and was formerly a visiting scholar at Lawrenceville School