Good Riddance, Mr. Chips

About the Book

Set in a strait-laced girls' school, the book is a satirical comedy with an engaging plot. Tim Merriman, teacher and part-time children's entertainer, has separated from his wife and taken a post at St Hilda's Academy, where he quickly falls foul of the scheming deputy head, Beryl Hunter.Soon plotting to remove Tim, High Church Beryl also has her sights on two others, the emarrassingly evangelical headmistress and Jessica, an intelligent but infuriatingly sceptical pupil.. Beryl herself is not without stain, however, as, apart from her addiction to drink and cigarettes, she is having a passionate affair with the bursar. She makes amends for these sins with an obsessive religiosity and a neurotic devotion to her professional duties. Through her masterly cunning, Beryl manages to get rid of Tim, the Head, and Jessica in one fell swoop. Before he leaves, Tim plans as an act of revenge a dramatic clandestine seance with his pupils.This is designed to draw the maximum degree of parental wrath on Beryl's head, while Tim walks away unscathed. Unfortunately, the seance goes badly wrong, but it is not only Tim who discovers that events have a curious habit of cocking a snook at human attempts to manipulate them...

About the Author

In 1961 Houston steel-worker Aaron Bolley lost no time in giving his first-born a name which would pay affectionate tribute to his rock 'n' roll hero, Buddy Holly. According to Huddie himself, he was a bone idle and academically inept student, gleaning an education largely from horror comics, magic books and moderately soft porn. Hence this conundrum for the reader. Whether in speech or in writing Bolley habitually favours a monosyllabic patois, laced with gross obscenities; what is more, a born and bred Texan, he has never travelled even once beyond the state borders: two facts which are very hard indeed to reconcile with the major features of style and content in the novella, Good Riddance, Mr Chips. But, to all questions on such issues, whether from enthusiastic general readers, adoring critics or besotted academics, Bolley's answer will almost certainly be the same: his characteristic non-committal grin. Now in his 40's, happily divorced and living with his pet sheep, Pamela, Huddie Bolley earns a meagre but adequate living as a children's entertainer in Lubbock, Texas. He is adamant that he has no wish to write - or indeed read - another work of fiction.