Home School

US: Hutchinson, 2007. Paperback. Good. Foxing to fep and outer page ends. At the end of Charles Webb's first novel, The Graduate, Benjamin Braddock r escues his beloved Elaine from a marriage made not in heaven but in Califor nia. It is now eleven years and 3,000 miles later, and the couple live in Westch ester County, a suburb of New York City, with their two young sons whom the y are educating at home. Through no accident, a continent now stands betwee n them and the boys' surviving grandparent, now known as Nan, but who in fo rmer days answered to Mrs. Robinson. As the story opens, the Braddock household is in turmoil as the Westchester School Board attempts to quash the unconventional educational methods the family is practicing. Desperate situations call for desperate remedies - even a cry for help to t he mother-in-law from hell, who is only too happy to provide her loving ser vices - but at a price far higher than could be expected. Charles Webb has a knack for pinpointing the horrors and absurdities of dom estic life, and Home School displays all the precision and wit that made Th e Graduate such a long-lasting success. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly It's one of modern pop culture's great mysteries: What happened after The Graduate's Ben and Elaine busted out of Elaine's church wedding and fled the world of hypocritical convention personified by her mother, Mrs. Robinson? In this sequel to his seminal 1963 novel, Webb's droll answer is that, 11 years on, they've settled down to a quiet suburban life in New York's Westchester County. Their sole antiestablishment gesture is to home-school their sons, Matt and Jason, using progressive educational n.