INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER“Wise and addictive… The Gifted School is the juiciest novel I’ve read in ages… a suspenseful, laugh-out-loud page-turner and an incisive inspection of privilege, race and class.”–J. Courtney Sullivan in The New York Times“The summer read that predicted the college-admissions scandal.” -The Wall Street Journal Smart and juicy, a compulsively readable novel about a … –The Wall Street Journal
Smart and juicy, a compulsively readable novel about a previously happy group of friends and parents that is nearly destroyed by their own competitiveness when an exclusive school for gifted children opens in the community
This deliciously sharp novel captures the relentless ambitions and fears that animate parents and their children in modern America, exploring the conflicts between achievement and potential, talent and privilege.
Set in the fictional town of Crystal, Colorado, The Gifted School is a keenly entertaining novel that observes the drama within a community of friends and parents as good intentions and high ambitions collide in a pile-up with long-held secrets and lies. Seen through the lens of four families who’ve been a part of one another’s lives since their kids were born over a decade ago, the story reveals not only the lengths that some adults are willing to go to get ahead, but the effect on the group’s children, sibling relationships, marriages, and careers, as simmering resentments come to a boil and long-buried, explosive secrets surface and detonate. It’s a humorous, keenly observed, timely take on ambitious parents, willful kids, and the pursuit of prestige, no matter the cost.
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I LOVED THIS NOVEL. Pitch perfect, razor sharp, compulsively readable and rich with delicious detail, this darkly funny satire combines the gimlet-eyed world view of Jonathan Franzen with the propulsive narration of Liane Moriarty. I can’t remember the last time I’ve enjoyed a novel as much.
Addictive, whip-smart, acutely observed and sharply funny, The Gifted School trains its lens on a community where a talented child is a social commodity and asks how far some families might be willing to go in pursuit of status. A delicious read.
Like Big Little Lies with standardized testing, this addictive novel digs hard into the culture of striving parents and anxious children, exploring privilege, competition, and the elusiveness of happiness. A deeply pleasurable read.
I was blown away by The Gifted School. A smart, insightful, and engrossing story about how the prospect of getting their children into a school for the gifted causes a group of competitive parents to comport themselves in the most unseemly and ultimately destructive ways. Snapping with tension, this is a book for our times. It will push a lot of buttons for a lot of people.
This book is a highly entertaining look at parents behaving badly—in their minds, to support and defend their gifted children, who of course don’t really need their protection and would be better served with a more healthy type of attention (and, just perhaps, aren’t all actually “gifted”). It dives into the overly competitive vibe in small, affluent towns among privileged families for special programs and selective schools. There’s cheating, attempts at back room deals, plenty of pressure and bad attitudes (both in academics and in athletics). It rang true for me…we all know parents like this. No character here is exempt, whether adult or child; they’re all self-involved. Yet each is portrayed with some redeeming qualities, which makes them more realistic. I almost wished one of the parents had been truly vile, but I think the takeaway here is that these parents represent many of us, whether we like it or not.
I highly recommend the audiobook of THE GIFTED SCHOOL. The narrator does an incredible job of capturing the voices of a large cast of POV characters–male and female, adult and teen. The story is timely and compelling, and pulls back the layers of relationships between four families as they vie for limited spots at the new gifted school. Such a tangled web of lies, secrets, and middle class parents behaving badly with a twist I didn’t see coming. Loved it!
Four sets of parents compete to get their kids into a new school for gifted children. The story spins into a dramatic, total train wreck that I couldn’t look away from. I put down a lot of books without finishing them. Not this one.
I absolutely devoured this book – it gave me strong Big Little Lies vibes, with plenty of satisfying small twists and reveals throughout the book.
What does it mean to be “gifted”? Is it book smart? Street smart? A savant?
Rose, Samantha, Lauren, and Rose are best friends, bonded together when they met at a “mommy and me” swim class after their kids were born. Eleven years later, their friendships are solid, nothing can break them apart, right?
When the announcement about a public school specifically designed for enhanced learners is coming to their small Colorado town, they are excited to watch as their children shine. As the admissions process begins for the Gifted School, tensions begin to rise. Assumptions are made. Feelings are dismissed and their children become the kindling of a fire they never realized was there.
Can these women work through their insecurities within their own lives and finally let the truth be revealed? Or will their friendships be crushed by the competition the new school has rooted within each of them?
In “The Gifted School”, Bruce Holsinger writes from the perspective of several characters. This technique brings a thought-provoking take on parenting, the comparisons made, and the pressures put on our children. As a reader and a parent, one can reflect on their actions and how it can affect not only our adult relationships, but our children as well.
However, these different perspectives and jumping around from one to the other, made the story slightly difficult to follow. Plus, the timeline was a little scrambled, causing the reader to question what is happening when. In addition, the amount of profanity was considerable and unwarranted in order to get the point across. Therefore, a rating of 3 out 5 stars is given.
As a word of caution, this book does have several issues it touches on that may be alarming to some. If triggered by drug and alcohol abuse, shoplifting, suicidal thoughts, bullying, or infidelity please be careful.
All in all, an intriguing look into the pressures parents put on themselves and our children. Would recommend to any parent with exceptional children, as do we not all have them?
I’m not sure what I expected when I started this book. Maybe that it would be poking fun at society with its helicopter parents, entitlements, and spoiled kids. But it was a much more serious tale. As a new school for the gifted plans to open, parents and kids reveal their true selves during the selection process. Lies, deceit, and self-centered ambition rear their ugly heads nearly destroying lives, careers, families, and friendships. Fortunately the power of love and forgiveness show up.
There were so many characters (adult, teen and preteen) that at times it was difficult to keep them all straight and remember who belonged to whom. There were places that I thought the story dragged, but the last fourth of the book really took off. It was a decent story, but I’m not sure I would reread or immediately recommend it to others.
This book shows the underbelly of the beast(s) in a “perfect ” small town when a new “gifted” school begins admission proceedings. I kinda flip flopped around with which characters I liked at any given time. They were definitely realistic. I felt bad for the kids. They pretty much didn’t care about the school one way or the other. They were caught by their parents crazy. The more I think about this book, the more I get out of it. It’s definitely worth reading, just don’t get caught in the crazy.
Great start – slowed in the middle. Found myself not liking any of the characters but was intrigued enough to finish. Abrupt ending but would recommend if at all interested in topic of Gifted/Talented education.
disappointed. As a teacher in a gifted school I was hoping to read about the school. Instead it was about rich selfish people trying to promote their children while trying to hid their poor choices in life. Not anything to o with the reality of a school for gifted children,
Thought provoking. Parents: Recognize yourselves and Back Off!!
Definitely a big change for Dr. Holsinger — I enjoyed it immensely. The characters were realistic. It was an interesting appraisal of parenting in our age.
Confusing! Didn’t finish it.
Scary to think about what parents and kids would do to get into a gifted school!
Reveals and touches upon very important issues dealing with school educating in the country
When I first began reading this book, I knew I was going to enjoy it. It started off very strong. I loved the young girls, the young boys, and the quirky nature of them. I enjoyed the camaraderie between the mothers of the children and the competitiveness of the fathers. I enjoyed reading about how the parents would go to great lengths to make sure their children got into the new public charter school for gifted children set in a fictional town outside of Denver, modeled on Boulder, Colorado. The parents were all-consumed by the admission process and more excited over the thought of getting accepted into the school then the children were. It was almost as if the parents were trying to live vicariously through their children.
All the while, the lives of the parents are not what they may seem on the surface. Rose, the pediatric neurologist, and her husband Gareth, have a very rocky marriage. They are trying to work on it for the sake of their daughter Emma Q. Samantha, and her husband Kev, are a very wealthy couple and parents to Emma Z. The two Emmas do most everything together. Aiden and Charlie are twin sons of Azra and Beck, a divorced couple, who have an amicable relationship post divorce. Azra has moved on and is dating. Beck has married the au pair Sonja. Beck and Sonja have a baby son together named Roy, but Beck is spiraling out of control-sloppy at home and work, physically, financially, and mentally. Lauren is the mother of Tessa and Xander. Lauren’s husband, Julian, passed away from cancer many years ago. Tessa is a troubled teen having recently come out of rehab. Tessa is also a talented fashion designer, but her mother has trouble communicating with Tessa. Lauren is primarily focused on Xander and his extraordinary capabilities, especially as shown when he plays chess. Lauren is struggling as a single parent.
With a new charter school about to open, all four families become obsessed with trying to get into the new school. This obsession causes them to do things that they normally would not, as they become competitive with each other. The admissions process and the children’s portfolios expose problems with the relationship between the families. There is also a child who is poor, Atik, but has an extraordinary talent creating origami figures. He is the child of the maid/housekeeper for Rose and Samantha‘s families.
This novel exposes the dangers of parents overshadowing their children, and trying to create accomplishments that aren’t there, instead of letting the children shine on their own. I really enjoyed the beginning of the novel, and the middle, but I wasn’t a big fan of the ending. The ending exposed all the faults of the parents, showed the maturity of the children-beyond their years in some cases-and the fragility on which relationships are built.
#TheGiftedSchool #BruceHolsinger
Timely and brutally funny, and at times poignant. Unlike some male authors, Bruce has a rare gift for capturing the voices and emotions of a certain class of American women. I loved it.