[A Good School] reads as swiftly as a stolen diary. That is nearly what it is: the annals of Dorset Academy, a prep school, during its expiring years in the early 1940s. The point of view rotates among many characters, but a protagonist gradually emerges…. (p. 42)

The Foreword and Afterword imply that the novel is largely autobiographical, and it is [the] unappetizing figure [of protagonist William Grove] whom we are meant to associate with the author. He bears, with no grace whatever, the stigmata of sparse pubic hair, naive rhetoric, and a crummy wardrobe. But William Grove endures. Surviving every form of boarding-school barbarism, he passes through apprenticeships social and literary, stumbling indeed, but always toward maturity. It is an impressive passage to witness, and its terminus is unmistakably marked. A Good School ends with Dorset Academy going out of business, as America and the Dorset boys wade...