Sophie Gee

With each of the novels that we've looked at so far, we've connected it to some bigger historical event that's giving it a frame.

So we said that Tom Brown's School Days, it's presenting stories

public school education, the world of rugby school and the educational ideology of Dr Arnold, it's presenting it as an allegory or a how-to manual, really, for maintaining the British Empire.

So the rugby pitch is the...

is the siege of Sarangapatam.

You know, the stakes far exceed the local context.

Then we said with The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie that it's kind of allegory for the Scottish Enlightenment and the condition of Scotland and Scotland's relationship to the rest of Britain and to Europe.

And we said with A Kestrel for a Knave that the school in Yorkshire is this microcosm of the way in which this whole segment of Britain is

working class colliery Britain has dropped off the map of being socially meaningful.

It's just kind of become excluded from the world of power and privilege and social hierarchies in modernising Britain.

So I was thinking, well, what is it about this?

What is it about a boarding school in Massachusetts?

in the 1990s.

You know, this is maybe a strain, but I was realizing that the book was published in 2005, but it's set in the late 80s and 90s.

And I guess that it's about the generation of school students of American elites immediately before 9-11.

So it's a post 9-11 novel, but it's set in the decade before 9-11, which is this kind of huge turning point, I think.

in the American psyche, where America really sees itself in a different relationship to the world than it has before.

So I guess I just wanted to do a moment of positioning this book as being a reflection after the catastrophe of 9-11 on the world before 9-11.

Yeah, it was like Edwardian Britain.

seen from the aftermath of the First World War.