Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: The Art Teacher
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY:
STATE:
COUNTRY: Italy
NATIONALITY: British
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15428568.Paul_Read * https://www.amazon.co.uk/Paul-Read/e/B01JZH3A7I/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0 * http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/index.php?title=The_Art_Teacher_by_Paul_Read
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2017027599
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2017027599
HEADING: Read, Paul, 1978 or 1979-
000 01084nz a2200217n 450
001 10392201
005 20170304073601.0
008 170303n| azannaabn |n aaa c
010 __ |a no2017027599
035 __ |a (OCoLC)oca10723790
040 __ |a ICrlF |b eng |e rda |c ICrlF
046 __ |f [1978,1979] |2 edtf
100 1_ |a Read, Paul, |d 1978 or 1979-
370 __ |e England |e Italy |2 naf
372 __ |a Literature |a Education |a Art |2 lcsh
374 __ |a Authors |a Educators |a Artists |2 lcsh
375 __ |a Men |2 lcsh
377 __ |a eng
670 __ |a Read, Paul. The art teacher, 2016: |b title page (Paul Read) author bio. (Paul Read, teacher in England)
670 __ |a goodreads.com, website, Feb. 23, 2017 |b (Paul Read, degree in Fine Art from the Kent Institute of Art and Design at Canterbury, worked in several inner-city schools as an art, English and supply teacher, both in England and Italy)
670 __ |a bexhillobserver.net/news, website, Mar. 1, 2017 |b (Published: 19 Sept. 2016 – Paul Read, 37, was confined to a wheelchair for two months and decided to write The Art Teacher while recovering from the road accident)
PERSONAL
Born c. 1978; married; wife’s name Patricia; children: two.
EDUCATION:Kent Institute of Art and Design, B.A.; City University London, M.A. (with distinction).
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author and teacher.
WRITINGS
SIDELIGHTS
Paul Read is a graduate of City University London and the Kent Institute of Art and Design, where he studied creative writing and fine art, respectively. He has spent most of his career years teaching. Read switched professional pastimes, however, once he fell victim to a traffic accident that left him wheelchair-bound. During the months he spent recovering, Read started on a writing project.
That project culminated into The Art Teacher, which is Read’s fiction debut. The novel is loosely influenced by Read’s occupation. It stars Patrick Owen, an art teacher to a group of troubled secondary school students. Patrick took his job as a teacher following a brief period as a professional guitarist. He used to work with Forsaken, a rock band that was unable to grasp success and soon broke apart, leading Patrick to the life he leads now. Patrick struggles to maintain control of his class each day, especially as his authority is constantly tested by a student named Denis. Denis is the head of a youth gang known as the Union Souljas, and it is this gang (among others) that domineers the school and has created an ever growing storm of violence. While the school faculty (Patrick included) wish to steer their students toward a better path, they are helpless to suppress the gang influence throttling the student body. Everything changes dramatically for Patrick when Denis suddenly turns up dead. Patrick winds up immediately implicated due to his contentious relationship with Denis; however, he knows he had nothing to do with Denis’s death. On top of this, Patrick is dealing with excessive conflict in various other areas of his life, both personally and professionally. His relationship with his wife is rapidly crumbling and now he has law enforcement eying him with the same distrust he receives from his students, his wife and several other people he knows. Patrick must figure out how to survive the harsh environment he’s forced to endure day after day, as well as try and clear his name. At the same time, further trouble heads his way when he steps in to try and save one student who wants nothing to do with any of the gangs or their activities. Patrick does his best to help them out, and ends up meeting their mother in the process. From there the two develop an intense romantic relationship, but if news of it were to get out, it would further slander Patrick’s precarious reputation.
A Publishers Weekly contributor noted: “The thrills are the main thing, and Read delivers them often and well.” Mandy Jenkinson, a reviewer on the Nudge Book website, remarked: “The writing’s good, much of the characterisation is also good.” She also said: “The plotting and pacing are on the whole well-handled.” Bookbag website writer Luke Marlowe commented: “A thriller with a compelling plot and several genuine gasp out loud moments, The Art Teacher is an incredibly good debut – I’m sure it’ll do hugely well, even if it may put a few off choosing teaching as a career!” A contributor to the Little Bookness Lane blog wrote: “The Art Teacher excelled beyond anything I was expecting.” She added: “The steady and continual layering is most excellently done until the tension is as snap-worthy as Patrick’s patience threshold.” On the Madhouse Family Reviews blog, Cheryl Pasquier felt: “It’s a chilling tale that gave me goosebumps, especially reading it as a teacher.” She went on to say: “The shock ending is suitably bittersweet – in this kind of social context, it would be unlikely for all of the characters to get their happy-ever-after.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Publishers Weekly, November 14, 2016, review of The Art Teacher, p. 35.
ONLINE
Bookbag, http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/ (September 1, 2016), review of The Art Teacher.
Legend Press Website, http://www.legendtimesgroup.co.uk/ (November 23, 2015), author profile.
Nudge Book, https://nudge-book.com/ (September 23, 2016), review of The Art Teacher.
legendary_press_logo
Home|Books | Authors | Events | Submissions | Legend 100 Club | Vacancies | Blog | Legend Classics youtube_icontwitter_iconfacebook_iconPinterest Sign-up Now!
Authors|Updated 23/11/2015
Paul Read
book_img
Paul Read is the author of The Art Teacher (September 2016) and Blame (April 2017).
After gaining a first in Fine Art at the Kent Institute of Art and Design at Canterbury, Paul Read moved to London, finding employment at Foyles bookshop before becoming a teacher. He has worked in several inner-city schools as an Art, English and supply teacher, both in England and Italy. He received a distinction from City University London for his creative writing MA.
A few years ago, Paul was involved in a hit-and-run incident which put him in a wheelchair for several months and was where he wrote the first draft of The Art Teacher. His second novel Blame was recently released in April 2017. He lives with Patricia and their two children.
Follow him on Twitter: @paulreadauthor
Share this Articlefacebook_icontwitter_icongoogle_plus
Legend Blogs
Let the People Decide!
The reader holds the ultimate power in the book industry
Calling All Writers - Flash Fiction Competition!
Send your 200 word stories inspired by the word HAUNTED by 5th November!
Hurricane Memories by Mark Piggott
The great hurricane of 87 was thirty years ago today. One of our authors, Mark Piggott, rec...
Legend Catalogue
catalogue_img
logo2_img
© Copyright Legend Times. 2016
10/21/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1508626957674 1/1
Print Marked Items
The Art Teacher
Publishers Weekly.
263.46 (Nov. 14, 2016): p35.
COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Art Teacher
Paul Read. Legend (IPG, dist.), $14.95 trade paper (272p) ISBN 978-1-78507-957-3
British author Read manages an impressive feat in his first novel: he has turned a high school art class into
the' focal point of a tense crime story. Patrick Owen, former guitarist for a one-hit band called the Forsaken,
is now forsaken himself, trying heroically to teach art to teenagers in a school just outside London. His main
enemy is one of his students, Denis Roberts, who leads the Union Souljas gang. Gang warfare permeates the
book, but Owen is also at war with his colleagues and superiors, his soon-to-be ex-wife, his ex-band
members, and even the mother of a student he tries to rescue from the gangs. When Denis is murdered,
Patrick is the prime suspect, which adds the press and the police to his list of antagonists. Read characterizes
gang culture as a symptom of overall social malaise and class division. The lack of sentimentality lends
realism, but the pervasive hopelessness makes the upbeat ending less credible. The thrills are the main thing,
and Read delivers them often and well. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Art Teacher." Publishers Weekly, 14 Nov. 2016, p. 35. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA473458982&it=r&asid=7d840121bd99b304900c19c4e8a1448f.
Accessed 21 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A473458982
Close menu
Skip to content
more Nudge
The Nudge Shop
More Ways to be nudged
nb magazine
Nudge Update
Book of the Year 2017
Competitions
Ones to Watch Out for
Other themes
Best Books of the 21st Century
Around the World in 80 Books
I’m a Writer . . .
OIR: Our Intrepid Reporter
Author meets Reviewer
What We Are Thinking
Voices
Love Your Indie
Contact Nudge
Bloggers and Links We Like
Real Readers
Real Readers: browse titles reviewed
BookHugger
BookNoir
BookChap
BookDiva
BookGeek
BookLife
Search Nudge
Search for:
Search … including "phrases in quotes"
Nudge
Skip to content
more Nudge
BookHugger
BookNoir
BookChap
BookDiva
BookGeek
BookLife
">
The Art Teacher by Paul Read
Facebook Twitter Google
Review published on September 23, 2016.
The story of Patrick Owen, the eponymous art teacher, is a realistic and gritty portrayal of what it’s like to teach in a troubled area amongst troubled children and families.
I enjoyed reading about his struggles and sympathised with him as he gets caught up in events that seem to spiral out of control all too quickly. His involvement with the gangs on the estate near the school is quite frightening, especially because teachers are placed in an impossible situation whether they try to help their pupils or not.
I enjoyed much of this book, although I did finally feel that the author let his material run away from him and hence lost control of both plot and characterisation. Patrick’s decision making becomes increasingly foolish and actually rather unjustifiable. There are quite a few moments when he could have clawed back control of the situation and I found myself exasperated and unconvinced by the final scenes.
However, the writing’s good, much of the characterisation is also good, and the plotting and pacing are on the whole well-handled, although perhaps a little less melodrama would have made for a more satisfying read.
Mandy Jenkinson 4/5
The Art Teacher by Paul Read
Legend Press 9781785079573 pbk Sep 2016
Previous:
Real Readers: Robert B. Parker’s The Devil Wins by Reed Farrel Coleman
Next:
The Beauty of the End by Debbie Howells
You may also like
14OCT
Turn of Mind, by Alice LaPlante
Review on BookNoir
A winner of the Wellcome Trust Book prize, this debut novel from LaPlante portrays the fragmented consciousness of Dr Je...
09MAY
SECOND OPINION: The Unquiet Dead by Ausma Zehanat Khan
Review on BookNoir
The Unquiet Dead is a brilliant murder mystery, which interweaves the solving of a crime ......
03SEP
Carnivore by Jonathon Lyon
Review on BookNoir
24-year-old debut novelist Jonathon Lyon has produced this most curious book that centres on Leander, ......
21JAN
An extract from Pascale Garnier’s Moon in a Dead Eye
Extract on BookNoir
The fifth of his noirs, The Front Seat Passenger, will be published by Gallic Books in March. Here's an extract from his...
Search Nudge
Search for:
Search … including "phrases in quotes"
The Nudge Shop
News from Book2Book
Stop hawking books on Amazon at such drastically slashed prices
August 14, 2017
Colm Tóibín Wins Award That Celebrates The Power Of Lit...
July 13, 2017
Writers Worldwide Mourn Death Of Writer-activist Liu Xiaobo, A Perman...
July 13, 2017
Irina Ratushinskaya, Soviet dissident who turned captivity into poetr...
July 13, 2017
How Amazon, Once Again, Is Driving Down The Value Of Books And Underm...
May 8, 2017
New Books on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Welcome to a place where booklovers can once again browse and discover the world of books. Where communities of discerning readers like you can reach beyond the bestseller lists to seek out hidden gems, uncover breakthrough authors and get the inside story on their favourite types of read.
© 2015 AMS Digital Publishing Ltd
The Art Teacher by Paul Read
The Art Teacher by Paul Read
Category: Thrillers
Rating: 4.5/5
Reviewer: Luke Marlowe
Reviewed by Luke Marlowe
Summary: A fast paced thriller that grips, entertains, and twists in surprising directions that take both the characters and the reader by surprise. Both a brilliantly fun read and a dark reflection on the stories of troubled schools and gang violence that we see filling the media, The Art Teacher is a terrific, timely read.
Buy? Yes Borrow? Yes
Pages: 288 Date: September 2016
Publisher: Legend Press
External links: Author's website
ISBN: 9781785079573
Share on: Delicious Digg Facebook Reddit Stumbleupon Follow us on Twitter
Related Kindle books
5 Ingredients - Quic… A Killing Truth: (A … Amazon Echo Dot (2nd… Fire TV Stick with A… Friend Request: The … Gone Unnoticed : A K… Gut Feeling Improper Influence (… In Sheep's Clothing:… Jenson Button: Life … La Belle Sauvage: Th… Origin: (Robert Lang… Phantom Pain Ready Player One Sweet Little Lies: '… The Image of You: I … The Mistake: An unpu…
Get WidgetPrivacyAmazon.co.uk
Patrick Owen managed seven years at Highfields Secondary School without punching a pupil in the face. A mediocre teacher, stuck in a struggling school ruled by violent pupils, Patrick goes home every night to an empty flat, and an existence filled with reminders of his life as a faded rock star. When one pupil over steps the mark, a brief mistake plunges Patrick into a world of danger, violence, and the glare of the media.
I was filled with dreams of being a teacher back when I was a teenager. A few weeks of work experience in a school put me right off - I just don't have the patience to be able to control a class of 30 rowdy children. Teachers get fairly badly represented in the press nowadays, seen as people who work 9 to half 4 and still get a huge amount of holidays a year. But, in truth, all of the teachers I know work late most nights, and spend their holidays paying huge amounts of money to go to destinations filled with the very children that they're trying to avoid. And of course, all of us have had our lives shaped by our teachers - mine so much so that I named my cat after a particularly inspirational one of mine...
Author Patrick Read worked as a teacher for a period - although he's quick to point out that his time was spent at an incredibly pleasant school with lovely colleagues, far removed from the hellish world that he's created in his book. His experience as a teacher clearly shows though - and whilst Patrick Owen is not a particularly brilliant teacher, his daily frustrations will no doubt be familiar to a range of teachers the nation over. The hellish school life leads into a murky corner of London filled with gangs, rotten council estates and desperate parents - and whilst it's not personally familiar to me, it brings to life in vivid yet murky detail a corner of London that I've gone past many times, either walking at top speed or hoping my bus won't break down.
The real grip of this book comes from the fact that Patrick Owen is never truly at ease. Whether struggling with pupils in the classroom, trying to avoid them in the streets, or dealing with what remains of his marriage at home, Owen is faced with constant difficult decisions. What makes the book a great read is the fact that, like many of us, he deals with them, but often very badly indeed. It's these decisions that continue to spiral him headfirst into a rotten wonderland filled with violence and danger.
The gang are represented fairly - whilst we never get a chance to know them well due to being in Owen's mind throughout, they never become stereotyped as is often the case when the subject of gangs crops up. They're both street smart gang members, and yet also scared children - which somehow makes them even more terrifying.
A thriller with a compelling plot and several genuine gasp out loud moments, The Art Teacher is an incredibly good debut - I'm sure it'll do hugely well, even if it may put a few off choosing teaching as a career! Give it a read, and I'm sure, like me, that you'll be keen to read the author's forthcoming second novel. Many thanks to the publisher for sending this cracking read my way.
And for further reading? I struggled to find one to suggest here - but plumped for Fox by Anthony Gardner. As per The Art Teacher it's a thriller with a racing plot that finds time to draw interesting references regarding the state of our nation and our media.
Buy The Art Teacher by Paul Read at Amazon You can read more book reviews or buy The Art Teacher by Paul Read at Amazon.co.uk.
Buy The Art Teacher by Paul Read at Amazon You can read more book reviews or buy The Art Teacher by Paul Read at Amazon.com.
Comments
Like to comment on this review?
Just send us an email and we'll put the best up on the site.
Categories: Paul ReadReviewed by Luke Marlowe4.5 Star ReviewsThrillersSeptember 2016ReviewsGeneral Fiction
Navigation menu
review discussion view source history
log in
search
Search
Go Search
categories
Fiction
Non-fiction
Children's books
Authors
navigation
Home
New reviews
Recommendations
New features
Articles
Interviews
Lists
Competitions
Random review
Newsletter
Social networks
For authors and publishers
Self-publishing and indie authors
Copyright and privacy policy
Advertise with us
Reviewer vacancies
We Buy Books - Sell your Books, CD's, DVD's and Games for Cash
Find your local Bookshop
tools
What links here
Related changes
Special pages
Printable version
Permanent link
Page information
Website support from Studio 83
Powered by MediaWiki
This page was last modified on 19 August 2016, at 14:24. Privacy policy About TheBookbag Disclaimers Mobile view
The Art Teacher is a portrayal of a blemished world where desperate youths are top of a dangerous food chain and the authorities are slowly losing their minds. Take every streetwise retort and sideways glare fuelled by troubled teenage tribes and simply accept that despite possessing a teaching degree, immense life experience, and your best efforts, you haven’t got a hope in hell of influencing their poor life choices.
An inoffensive Art Teacher wouldn’t normally orbit the infamous Braddock estate except he teaches the majority of the local kids who live at this unfortunate post code, infamous for its recruitment of youths into one of the territorial gangs – little did he know their worlds would soon collide.
Patrick might be paid to turn up every day and educate them on how to throw a pot to the best of their abilities and decorate it afterwards, but ironically all their interest lay in similar pursuits such as hurling clay bricks and daubing senseless graffiti tags all over the neighbourhood.
Yes, the cunning kids featured in The Art Teacher would seamlessly blend into a heckling pack of hyenas circling its prey. Their complacency in the classroom originates from dark, unpredictable motives and that’s the liberally greased slippery slope right there, as any problem behaviour is given a wide birth and their unbridled distain for authority is relatively unchallenged for fear of reprisal.
That is, until Patrick’s dignity is teetering on the verge of non-existent and he confronts one of his more troublesome students. The subject that day was Denis, self-appointed spawn of the devil by nature of his unruly actions. He uses the scar from his hair lip to his advantage to strike a menacing pose before he grunts something obnoxious at Patrick; wearing that scowl like a badge of honour he tallies invisible medals from the dishonourable deeds he’s been engaged in.
It was truly awful to witness Patrick’s downward spiral into oblivion as his spontaneous challenge only resulted in a larger target being placed on his back. While escape from the battle cries of the anonymous students who elected themselves judge and jury is nigh on impossible, retaliation festers behind their smirking jaws but it’s nothing like he (or I as a reader) could ever imagine.
On the flip side of the coin, in a place where hope isn’t snuffed out, Patrick attempts to side step the bad eggs to help one of his students pleading help. Frequent visits to the grim Braddock estate opens his eyes, yet naivety will be his downfall as he’s outsmarted at every turn. This brooding plot aims to turn Patrick into a social pariah, and the intimidation and taunting he suffers attracts the interest of the local police to his door when they are drafted in to investigate a major incident on the estate which will alter the course of his life forever.
The Art Teacher excelled beyond anything I was expecting. The steady and continual layering is most excellently done until the tension is as snap-worthy as Patrick’s patience threshold. There’s a razor sharp observation of everything that has been damaged sociologically within the blink of a generation. Despite the oppressive air of despondency smothering them all the writing is fresh, engaging, and slices through contemporary issues with ease.
Rating: A HIGHLY RECOMMENDED 5/5
The art teacher of the title is Patrick Owen, who has reason to be disillusioned with his life in many ways. He is going through a messy split with his wife, who has recently disappeared back to her native South America with their son, and in place of the legion of adoring fans that he once had, back in the days when he was a semi-famous rock star, he now has a school full of sneering pupils instead. The first line of the blurb on the back of the book sets the tone : "Patrick Owen managed seven years at Highfield Secondary School without punching a pupil in the face." As a teacher, I wryly smiled with a tiny bit of recognition and empathy !
The inner city school in the heart of soulless housing estates that have been abandoned by the police and overrun with warring teenage gangs is undoubtedly an exaggeration, but I could recognise some of the less appealing aspects of my job, at least in the early parts - the bolshy teens with their hair-raising banter in the playgrounds, scuffles in the corridors and attempts to disrupt lessons did, sadly, ring true, although I don't think many teachers would get as over-involved as Patrick, as the novel progresses.
Every school has at least one nightmare pupil - it's inevitable because school politics mean that if you expel one "rotten apple", you have to accept another one in exchange from another school - and Highfield's pupil from hell has Mr Owen permanently in his sights. He likes to push his buttons, and his luck, knowing full well that his teacher can't touch him ... at least on school premises. This incident isn't Patrick's only lack of professional judgement though - he also gets romantically involved with the mother of another pupil from the same class, which makes things even more complicated.
As the rival teen gangs start intensifying their violence on the estate, Patrick finds himself unwittingly becoming a pawn in a dangerous game of cat and mouse, where he is totally out of his depth with more than his professional reputation at stake.
It's a chilling tale that gave me goosebumps, especially reading it as a teacher. Although Patrick's reactions and choices often seemed highly improbable, the basic plot itself is disturbingly believable. The shock ending is suitably bittersweet - in this kind of social context, it would be unlikely for all of the characters to get their happy-ever-after.