book review of the english teacher

Books | “The English Teacher” is a spy tale so real…

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Books | “the english teacher” is a spy tale so real that israel censored it.

By Richard Lipez ,  Special to The Washington Post

By Yiftach Reicher Atir. Translated by Philip Simpson. Penguin.

“The English Teacher” is the story of a Mossad operative written by a former Israeli intelligence officer. It’s not an autobiography but rather a thriller, based loosely on facts, or as its author, Yiftach Reicher Atir, writes in his introductory note, “a true story, of real life operatives that are wholly made up, and actual missions that never happened.”

Atir provides an astonishing look at Middle Eastern spycraft. He alerts readers that “numerous changes and omissions were imposed” by his government’s censors. Because a lot of what got into the novel seems plenty revealing and is often hair-raising, one is left wondering what shockers were left out. Also, how much of what Atir (who participated in the 1976 hostage-rescue operation in ­Entebbe, Uganda) put into the book is actually disinformation meant to throw other Middle Eastern intelligence agencies off track about how the Mossad spy agency actually operates? These are legitimate, intriguing questions that only add to the novel’s overall mysteriousness and to the many pleasures it offers.

The book begins with a startling moment: Operative Rachel Ravid — once Rachel Goldschmitt, sometimes Rachel Brooks — is preparing to vanish.

We see her closing up the apartment of her recently deceased father and basking in the freedom his death has finally provided her. Instead of returning to Tel Aviv and her job in biological weapons research, the 41-year-old is headed elsewhere in the Middle East, and she’s not telling anybody where. Impulsively, it seems — though is the act really calculated? — Rachel phones her old case officer, Ehud, now retired from the Mossad, and tells him: “My father died. He died for the second time,” before abruptly hanging up.

Near-panic breaks out in the Israeli intelligence establishment. Falsely announcing the death of her father 15 years earlier was code for Rachel’s fleeing the unnamed Arab country where she had worked as an English teacher for six years while gathering information on that country’s biological weapons program. Most of the invaluable data she had stolen came from her lover, a sweet, hapless man named Rashid, whose family ran a chemical business. Now it appears that Rachel, overcome with guilt and yearning for the return of lost love, may be headed back to the man she abandoned without explanation years earlier when it looked as if she was about to be exposed. The problem for Israel is that she’s carrying a trove of state secrets around inside her head.

The widowed Ehud, brought back to trace and then reason with his renegade former agent, is under terrific pressure. His former colleagues know that he was himself in love with Rachel and may not have been as objective in managing her as he should have been. Nor is it easy for him to accept that Rachel has become such a “loose cannon” that she may have to be framed or even killed by the Mossad. Atir is straightforward and sometimes graphic in his depictions of Mossad assassinations. Rachel herself was once a party to one, staging an encounter with a German scientist who liked to kiss attractive women’s hands and dispatching him with a poisoned glove.

Among the many insights of Atir’s compelling tale is why people are drawn to this patriotic dirty work. It’s not only Zionism that impels men and women to live these highly risky undercover lives. Ehud admits that “there’s something intoxicating in our work; suddenly it’s permissible to lie, you can put on an act, and everything is sanctioned by the state.”Atir seems to be saying that it’s wise to be apprehensive about the personalities who choose to live their lives as liars. The people who do it get very good at it, however, and they have to. Rachel is warned before she takes on her original assignment that in the country where she’ll work “half the population are informers and the other half are intelligence targets who have to be watched.” Any blunders will lead to her torture and death.

Although Atir never questions Israel’s overall policies with its neighbors — the country’s survival as a Jewish state is an operational given here — he does portray heartbreakingly the moral toll on the individuals who carry out what recent Israeli governments have deemed necessary for the country’s safety. As in the works of John le Carre and Charles McCarry, here we see that in the day-to-day spy business, it’s not so much countries that are in danger but individual human souls.

Reviewed by Richard Lipez, who writes the Don Strachey PI novels under the name Richard Stevenson.

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THE ENGLISH TEACHER

by Yiftach R. Atir ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 30, 2016

Atir appreciates subtle spycraft and knows his business, but this tale is often morose and features a woman who can be less...

An ex-Mossad agent sets off a scramble at the agency when she disappears.

Rachel’s father has died and she’s traveled to London to settle his estate, but her thoughts are filled with melancholy for the relationship the two failed to cement before she left home. When she finds a box of letters from her former handler, Ehud, in which he explains to her father that Rachel is working for Mossad—a detail she was forbidden to share with him herself—she decides she's had enough and vanishes—but only after calling Ehud and leaving him with a cryptic message: "My father died....He died for the second time." Her disappearance sets off alarms in Israeli intelligence circles: although Rachel has been retired for some time, what she knows about Mossad’s operations and key intelligence she developed could be ruinous. They need to find her and find her fast. Ehud and Joe, another retired agent, begin the search for the woman who is wanted “dead or alive,” and, as they continue, Ehud, long in love with Rachel, tells Joe her story. The point of view switches back and forth between Rachel as she pursues her missions and Ehud, who narrates Rachel’s story until this point. While the details of a covert operative’s life and methods are certainly fascinating, Atir’s style is not. Ehud and Rachel share the same voice, rendering the narrative strangely monotonous. It’s not a bad voice, but it never varies, even when the stakes change from forbidden love to a risky maneuver involving biological weapons. Ultimately, Rachel’s life comes across as sad, and she’s painted as capable but damaged. Readers will have to work hard to care about her since there’s little to justify Ehud’s undying love.

Pub Date: Aug. 30, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-14-312918-9

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Penguin

Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016

MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | THRILLER | ESPIONAGE | PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

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THE SILENT PATIENT

by Alex Michaelides ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 5, 2019

Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.

A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.

"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.

Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Celadon Books

Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018

GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | SUSPENSE | PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER

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SEEN & HEARD

A CONSPIRACY OF BONES

by Kathy Reichs ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 17, 2020

Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.

Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.

A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice ( The Bone Collection , 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”

Pub Date: March 17, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020

GENERAL MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | GENERAL THRILLER & SUSPENSE | MYSTERY & DETECTIVE | SUSPENSE | THRILLER | DETECTIVES & PRIVATE INVESTIGATORS | SUSPENSE | GENERAL & DOMESTIC THRILLER

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Submitting a book for review, write the editor, you are here:, the english teacher.

Vida Avery was used to being on her own. Fifteen years earlier, she had left her life and family back in Texas and fled to a remote island off the coast of Maine and began teaching at a private school. She believed this to be the best environment for her young son, Peter. But sensing that Peter perhaps needed more than she alone could give, she agrees to marry Tom Belou, a widowed clothing manufacturer. By leaving behind their life on the campus of the prep school and moving into Tom's home with his three children, Vida at last feels that Peter has the family he deserves.

But what about Vida? Does she even love Tom? She begins to question that herself. As she starts teaching TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES to her students, she finds eerie comparisons between Thomas Hardy's doomed heroine and herself. Was Vida, like Tess, fated to live on a "blighted star?" All the while, the bond between mother and son is tested as Peter tries his best to adapt to his life at school and the new one at home with his three new stepsiblings and stepfather.

Along with the Hardy comparison, author Lily King uses the setting (Maine in 1980 against the backdrop of the Iran Hostage Crisis) to parallel her lead characters' heightened sense of stifling restraint. The reader is not entirely sure of Vida's motives at any given moment or how her decisions will fare her, which urges one to read on to see where she will end up.

THE ENGLISH TEACHER begs the discussion: Are people in control of their own destinies, or are they --- as Hardy believed --- helpless victims of fate?

Reviewed by Bronwyn Miller on January 21, 2011

The English Teacher by Lily King

• Publication Date: July 26, 2005
• Genres: Fiction
• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press
• ISBN-10: 0871138972
• ISBN-13: 9780871138972

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Reading guide for The English Teacher by Lily King

Summary  |  Excerpt  |  Reading Guide  |  Reviews  |  Beyond the Book  |  Read-Alikes  |  Genres & Themes  |  Author Bio

The English Teacher

by Lily King

Critics' Opinion:

Readers' Opinion:

• Literary Fiction
• New England, USA
• Contemporary
• Generational Sagas
• Mid-Life Onwards
• Dealing with Loss

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• Reading Guide

Reading Guide Questions

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• At the heart of the novel is the quest of Vida to find truth through fiction. The epigraph for The English Teacher, "Life is beginning. I now break into my hoard of life," is from Virginia Woolf. How would you describe Vida as an English teacher? What are her strengths? What are her dramatic limitations? What distinguishes an English teacher from other teachers? Does living in the world of books hamper Vida, or does it expand her experience? Do the students of an imaginative English teacher—and readers of good books—suspend disbelief in order to grow or live on multiple levels?
• Why does Vida hate teaching Tess of the D'Urbervilles ? Why is she afraid of Peter reading it? (See pages 33–38.) What is perverse about her students' taking the book to their hearts, adding it to Mrs. Avery's legendary status? How does the teaching of the novel continue to correlate with events in the book? See the last page, for instance.
• Peter is largely resistant to his mother's obsession with literature. He feels held at arm's length by her retreats into poetry and fiction. Is that a fair assessment on his part? Describe one time when he, too, understands something better, more immediately, by recalling a poem.
• "Memory does its work underground. Beneath consciousness, a past moment finds its kin all at once. Like a fish returned to its school, it frolics in remembered waters, and stirs up others. . . . Yet even awful, unlivable memories want to be relived; the fragments yearn to be whole once more" (p. 103). For Vida the "unlivable memory" is always near the surface as well as beneath consciousness. Does the passage evoke other characters, too? Have you known people who, like Vida, are disabled by earlier traumas? (For instance, there has been great attention recently to people's retrieved memories of childhood abuse. Do you give any credence to those who say, "Let it go—just get on with your life"?) How is Peter an inciting force for Vida's dealing fully with her rape?
• " 'Vida's a hoot, isn't she?' Peter heard Tom's brother say to him at the door. 'She is,' Tom said, confused, like he'd bought an appliance with too many features" (p. 94). How does Tom try and fail and then ultimately succeed in understanding and winning the complex, educated, and wounded Vida? What are the qualities that serve him in the end? Can you think of particular moments that show his generosity and strength? Think of his burying Walt, sharing his workshop with Peter, confronting Vida about her drinking. Others? What about the yellow dress?
• "She figured that all marriages, if they lasted, ended up here in the land of quiet regret" (p. 152). We remember that this is Vida's first try at marriage. What have been her observations about the institution so far? About her school colleagues? About her own parents? It is their strains that drive her to find a new reality in books. Vida is tantalized by the Hardy poem in which a young man is lured by his ideal of love, "not by the poor girl he has been projecting his illusions onto" (p. 105). Vida feels Tom is always asking, "Why aren't you who I thought you were?" (p. 104). Is Tom unrealistic in his hopes for Vida? Are there other characters who idealize someone in the book? Does King suggest that bedrock reality (disillusionment?) is a requirement for a strong marriage? Or is it a starting point for a mature relationship of any kind?
• What is Peter's preoccupation with Mary Belou, the phantom mother in his new house? (Peter also wonders if his own mysterious father is dead and waiting for him—when that figure is not raking leaves!) What is it that Peter needs from the now mythologized Mary? (See page 101.) Is there some resolution for him later?
• Recall some scenes of both lively humor and poignancy. For example, think of Peter's getting trapped in the nuptial bedroom (p.28), wild to escape this lunatic moment. And Vida, true to form, in her schoolroom faced down by Tom, "grew bored by his performance. She had the impulse to get up and grade a few papers until he had finished" (p. 148). Can you think of other funny moments, all the sharper because they ring true to human nature?
• What is it about the hostages that both compels and reflects the characters in the novel? It is one of the few issues that gets the family involved in something beyond themselves. How have the characters themselves been held hostage? For instance, when they are fleeing across the country, Peter reflects, "It wasn't just her silence for the past four days but her silence all of his life" (p. 209). How does it take many levels of diplomacy, perseverance, and perhaps luck to release the hostages that are the people in this book?
• Discuss the varied angles of vision in the novel. How do we learn about Vida, for instance, other than through her own thoughts and actions? We know that characters perceive external reality through their own lenses and needs. Give some examples. How do we know whom to trust? One surprise is the diner waitress who observes and reflects on a young boy and an old woman. How does this section add to our knowledge of Peter and Vida's odyssey? Elsewhere, which are the most interesting shifts in points of view?
• How is Walt a touchstone for the family? Older than Peter, where did he come from? And how is he important to the pivotal events of chapter seven?
• Would you say that perhaps the central drama, the conflict that needs to be resolved, is the one between Vida and Peter? Is it this relationship that finally allows others to fall into place?
• King is unorthodox in many ways, not intimidated by convention in her novel. Does Vida reflect this originality, particularly King's gimlet eye? When? What other characters show odd and fresh human reactions? For instance, when Tom is questioning Peter about Vida, the boy "wished they didn't have to talk about her. He wished he just lived with the Belous without her getting in the way" (p. 127). When else does King reveal dead-on observations or memories of what it's like to be a teenager, in school, at home, or at parties?
• Mary Karr, writer of memoirs and poetry, has defined a dysfunctional family as "any family with more than one person in it." Is that definition apt for King's book? How do parents and children fail one another in The English Teacher ? What do they have to risk to grow closer? What are the added challenges of the stepfamily? Is this ultimately the way it is with families: intricate webs, interwoven, fragile, tenacious, voracious, and beautiful?
• How does style reveal substance in chapter twelve (pp. 213–15)? Does Vida's internal dialogue, recollecting Joyce, put us inside her breakdown? And what about her aimlessness, paranoia, and nighttime panic attacks? How does she begin to work her way out?
• What does California represent in the book, as opposed to Texas or New England? How is it important to Gena? Stuart? Peter? Vida? Fran? Tom? When do you begin to suspect that freedom is a central theme? (Is it logical that Vida's fear of killing her son is tied up with her own need to be free? Of what?)
• How well do we know Stuart and Fran? Is it mostly through Peter's eyes? Do the brother and sister change in the book? Remember the scene where Peter revolves the picture cube in the living room, trying to find out who Stuart is. From early days Peter longed for siblings, to be part of a family. He hoped his mother's marriage "meant, ultimately, a real union, a true synthesis, without any loose ends" (p. 27). Is this goal achieved in the end? For everyone?
• "It was all about courage. To live even a day on this earth required courage. All those things they read in school— The Odyssey , Beowulf , Huckleberry Finn —were all about courage but the teacher never said, You may not have to kill a Cyclops or a dragon but you will need just as much courage to get through the day" (p. 236). What are times when courage is particularly required of people in this book? Is it a quality that can be learned? Do characters help each other find it?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Grove Press. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.

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The English Teacher Paperback – June 7, 2006

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 256 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Grove Press
• Publication date June 7, 2006
• Dimensions 6.62 x 0.76 x 8.08 inches
• ISBN-10 0802142664
• ISBN-13 978-0802142665
• See all details

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Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Grove Press; Reprint edition (June 7, 2006)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0802142664
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0802142665
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 10.5 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.62 x 0.76 x 8.08 inches
• #3,446 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
• #6,319 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
• #20,121 in Literary Fiction (Books)

About the author

Lily King grew up in Massachusetts and received her B.A. in English Literature from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her M.A. in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. She has taught English and Creative Writing at several universities and high schools in this country and abroad.

Lily’s first novel, The Pleasing Hour (1999) won the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and was a New York Times Notable Book and an alternate for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her second, The English Teacher, was a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year, a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, and the winner of the Maine Fiction Award. Her third novel, Father of the Rain (2010), was a New York Times Editors Choice, a Publishers Weekly Best Novel of the Year and winner of both the New England Book Award for Fiction and the Maine Fiction Award. Lily's new novel, Euphoria, was released in June 2014. It has drawn significant acclaim so far, being named an Amazon Book of the Month, on the Indie Next List, and hitting numerous summer reading lists from The Boston Globe to O Magazine and USA Today. Reviewed on the cover of The New York Times, Emily Eakin called Euphoria, “a taut, witty, fiercely intelligent tale of competing egos and desires in a landscape of exotic menace.”

Lily is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and a Whiting Writer's Award. Her short fiction has appeared in literary magazines including Ploughshares and Glimmer Train, as well as in several anthologies.

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The English Teacher

By yiftach reicher atir translated by philip simpson, by yiftach reicher atir read by charlotte albanna, category: spy novels | suspense & thriller, category: spy novels | suspense & thriller | audiobooks.

Aug 30, 2016 | ISBN 9780143129189 | 5-5/16 x 8 --> | ISBN 9780143129189 --> Buy

Aug 30, 2016 | ISBN 9780143129196 | ISBN 9780143129196 --> Buy

Aug 30, 2016 | 508 Minutes | ISBN 9780735286894 --> Buy

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Aug 30, 2016 | ISBN 9780143129189

Aug 30, 2016 | ISBN 9780143129196

Aug 30, 2016 | ISBN 9780735286894

508 Minutes

Buy the Audiobook Download:

• audiobooks.com

About The English Teacher

Soon to be the major motion picture  The Operative, starring Martin Freeman and Diane Kruger. For readers of John Le Carré and viewers of Homeland , a slow-burning psychological spy-thriller by a former brigadier general of intelligence in the Israeli army One of  The Washington Post’s 10 Best mystery books and thrillers of 2016 After attending her father’s funeral, former Mossad agent Rachel Goldschmitt empties her bank account and disappears. But when she makes a cryptic phone call to her former handler, Ehud, the Mossad sends him to track her down. Finding no leads, he must retrace her career as a spy to figure out why she abandoned Mossad before she can do any damage to Israel. But he soon discovers that after living under cover for so long, an agent’s assumed identity and her real one can blur, catching loyalty, love, and truth between them. In the midst of a high-risk, high-stakes investigation, Ehud begins to question whether he ever knew his agent at all.   In The English Teacher , Yiftach R. Atir drew on his own experience in intelligence to weave a psychologically nuanced thriller that explores the pressures of living under an assumed identity for months at a time.

Listen to a sample from The English Teacher

About yiftach reicher atir.

Yiftach Reicher Atir was born in 1949 on Kibbutz Shoval, in the south of Israel. As a young commando officer, he participated in Operation Entebbe and other military and intelligence operations before retirement with the rank of Brigadier General (Intelligence). The English… More about Yiftach Reicher Atir

Product Details

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“Compelling…As in the works of John le Carré and Charles McCarry, here we see that in the day-to-day spy business, it’s not so much countries that are in danger but individual human souls.” — The Washington Post “The time is right for this astonishing thriller…Though facts have been masked by censors for security reasons, the emotional and psychological elements ring true. ” — Library Journal “Reicher Atir writes with poetic authority of the bleak isolation that pervades the life of the spy long after their active existence is over. This black yet strangely beautiful tragedy will stay with me for a long time.” —Alex Marwood “[Reicher Atir] provides an astonishing look at Middle Eastern spycraft.” — The Denver Post “An extraordinary page turner, told with clarity, insight, and compassion, The English Teacher offers a rare and realistic portrait of the unrelenting sacrifices of living a double life.” —Gideon Raff   “[Yiftach R. Atir] probes how leading a double life can erode the foundations of a spy’s former existence; how all of the lies are rooted in truth, and the truth, especially when it comes to love, is often coated with a patina of lies. . . . Masterful.” — The Times of Israel   “The book . . . does exactly what a novel of its kind should do: re-examine the Mossad. Throughout the book . . . doubts are cast on personal as well as national morality. . . . Atir seeks to pinpoint the fine line separating the moral actions that operatives perform for their country and their own exploitation.” — Ha’aretz

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The English Teacher

R. K. Narayan | 4.05 | 3,626 ratings and reviews

Ranked #98 in Indian Author

Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of The English Teacher from the world's leading experts.

Mark Tully Krishnan is often seen as RK Narayan. I have chosen it as a tribute to Narayan, who was internationally discovered by Graham Greene. I love the writing of Graham Greene and I love the writing of Narayan, in part because it is such clean writing. I get terribly bored with overly adjectival writing. I get bored with writing which is unnecessarily complex and unnecessarily descriptive. You can hardly get a more lean writer than R K Narayan. And again he is writing about very ordinary people. There is nothing sensational, heroic or deeply tragic about his writing. Of course it is very sensitive... (Source)

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The English Teacher

• By Yiftach Reicher Atir; translated by Philip Simpson
• Penguin Books
• Reviewed by Philip K. Jason
• August 25, 2016

This psychological thriller probes the damaging uncertainties of life undercover.

Rachel Goldshmitt, Rachel Brooks, Rachel Ravid. Who is Rachel, exactly? Knowing she is a Mossad operative involved in a dangerous undercover assignment only begins to answer the question.

In this dark, interior tale, identity is scrutinized from several angles: identity hidden, identity adopted, identity lost. How does an operative playing out her cover story hold on to who she really is underneath? What does she have to sacrifice to be effective? And is she, herself, the sacrifice?

The English Teacher begins with the disappearance of this seasoned and exceptionally successful operative. Her former mentor and handler, Ehud, along with another senior Mossad operative, is assigned to determine what happened to her.

While Ehud cares deeply about this woman, whom he has known and secretly loved for a long time, it is not caring alone that motivates him. A stray agent is a danger to the Mossad and to Israeli security. She knows too much. How could this person, who as a young woman immigrated to Israel and whose Zionist passion made her a fairly easy recruit, simply disappear?  

Much of the novel follows the investigation conducted by Ehud and his associate, Joe. Their dialogue is a rich blend of their personal and professional lives. For Ehud, his future is at stake. While the two men have a high degree of trust and shared understanding of the spy business, there is a game going on in which Joe has the upper hand.

Another dimension of the novel follows Ehud’s interior life at various times in his life and in his relationship with Rachel. And yet another segment, by far the most provocative, though dependent on insights afforded by the other characters, follows Rachel: her challenges, her loneliness, her search for a way of holding on to a centered self among the variable selves she dons for her country.

Rachel, whose cover is as a Canadian citizen raised in England, enters an Arab city (probably left unidentified due to Israeli censorship) and finds work at a school specializing in teaching English. She had already developed this skill while living in the Israeli town of Rehovot.

Breaking every rule, but perhaps still with a spy’s intent, she allows herself an affair with an Arab man named Rashid. In his company, she can visit places at which she might otherwise seem out of place.

Author Reicher Atir handles the growth of their passionate love within the context of Rachel’s duplicity with astounding skill. Who can a liar trust? The narrator observes that, “You even look at people differently, listen to them in another way, assessing every word and inflection. This is the punishment of the liar — the one who lies habitually can’t trust anyone.”

Rachel’s missions include obtaining important information, taking photographs, performing an assassination, and blowing up an enemy facility. Her terror is the fear of error, the fear of discovery, and the fear of not being able to control herself — to stay fully in her role without ever striking others as role-playing.

She becomes a Mossad superstar, but of course private celebrity affords little satisfaction. No one outside the Mossad can know.

Reicher Atir, who served in Israeli intelligence, raises important issues in this remarkably revealing novel. At one point, Ehud says, “There’s something intoxicating in our work; suddenly it’s permissible to lie, you can put on an act, and everything is sanctioned by the state. The operative is licensed to commit crimes. He steals, sometimes he even kills, and instead of going to prison he gets a commendation.”

The justifications for asking people to accept this inverted morality are at hand (saving the lives of others, etc.), but readers are left to wonder about the costs to the operative. Essentially, secret agents are on their own. They have no recourse to justice if captured, no expectation of assistance if things go wrong. They are expendable.

Ehud’s search for Rachel is simultaneously a search for himself. The end of the search is a chilling surprise, a fitting resolution to the many questions the novel explores, not only about these haunted characters, but also about the nations and institutions that train, employ, and brutalize such brutal operatives. 

Philip K. Jason is professor emeritus of English at the United States Naval Academy. A former editor of Poet Lore magazine, he is the author or editor of 20 books, including Acts and Shadows: The Vietnam War in American Literary Culture  and  Don’t Wave Goodbye: The Children’s Flight from Nazi Persecution to American Freedom . His reviews appear in a wide variety of regional and national publications.

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The Teacher (Review, Summary & Spoilers)

By freida mcfadden.

Book review and synopsis for The Teacher by Freida McFadden, a twisty psychological thriller about an ostracized student and a jealous wife.

In The Teacher by Frieda McFadden, Addie is an ostracized student attending Caseham High. The other students believe she was romantically involved with one of the teachers last year and that he was fired as a result.

Meanwhile, Eve and Nate Bennett are a married couple who are both teachers at the school. Eve is paranoid about her handsome husband, the late nights he works and the many young women at school who have crushes on him.

In this twisty psychological thriller, it's never quite clear who can be trusted, what secrets each of the characters hold, and where the truth lies.

(The Full Plot Summary is also available, below)

Full Plot Summary

The one-paragraph version: Addie is a high school senior who is believed to have had an improper relationship with a former teacher. While that was a misunderstanding, she begins an affair with Nate, the handsome married English teacher. There's an altercation and Nate's wife Eve is injured by Addie, but Nate is the one who then kills Eve. Nate tries to frame Addie, but another student he was sleeping with, Kenzie, comes forward, and Addie and Kenzie go to the police with the truth. Meanwhile, it's revealed that Eve survived and was buried alive, but dug her way out. Eve is actually a former student of Nate's that he seduced. With the help of Jay (who Eve was having an affair with), she lures Nate to the grave, knocks him out and buries him alive.

In Part I , Addie is a high school junior at Caseham High who is rumored to have gotten a teacher, Arthur Tuttle, fired due to them having an improper relationship. At school, she is ostracized and ignored by Hudson, her former best friend. She's also bulled by Kenize, Hudson's popular and pretty new girlfriend. It's revealed that Hudson stopped speaking to Addie after an accident that resulted in them killing Addie's abusive, alcoholic father a year ago (pushed down the stairs in an altercation).

Meanwhile, Eve and Nate are a married couple and both teachers at Caseham. Nate is very handsome, and he constantly rebuffs Eve's attempts to be more affectionate and have more sex. Eve also has a tendency to buy expensive pairs of heels, which Nate disapproves of. Eve, jealous and frustrated, has been having an affair with Jay, a shoe salesman for four months.

Nate loves poetry and takes an interest in Addie after reading one of her poems. Soon Nate and Addie begin an affair, and Addie loses her virginity to Nate. He writes Addie a poem. It's revealed that unlike now, the incident with Mr. Tuttle was actually a misunderstanding. Arthur had been tutoring Addie, and she'd gone to his house for support one night, but she was spotted in the bushes looking in on him and his wife having dinner. The optics of the situation meant that Arthur ended up being fired.

Addie gets increasingly attached to Nate, and Eve eventually sees Nate and Addie kissing. She tells Nate to end it and that she wants a divorce. When Addie goes to try to convince Eve that they're really in love, Addie gets hysterical and hits Eve with a frying pan. Addie calls Nate for help. It turns out Eve is still alive, but Nate kills Eve by choking her to death, fearing what she knows. When Addie asks asks about the red marks on Eva's neck, Nate avoids the question.

In Part II , Nate and Addie dig a grave, but Nate ditches Addie to bury the body alone. Addie ends up calling Hudson to pick her up. The next day, Nate tells the police that his wife has gone missing and hints that Addie could be involved. The police believe him at first, but they hint to Addie that he is trying to pin the disappearance on her.

Kenzie reveals to Addie that she saw Addie with the poem that Nate had given to Addie. Kenzie recognized it because it's the same one he once gave to her. Kenzie started sleeping with Nate when she was 14. The two agree to go to police and tell them the truth.

In Part III , it's revealed that Eve was actually still alive and able to dig her way out since Addie had merely covered her with leaves. Eve has been staying with Jay. Eve and Jay lure Nate back to the grave, knock him out and bury him alive. It's revealed that Eve was also a former student of Nate's that he seduced many years ago when she was 15.

In the Epilogue , people think Nate simply disappeared after facing being labeled a sex offender. And Eve resurfaces, saying she just wanted to get away for a few days. It's revealed that the "Jay" that Eve was seeing was actually Hudson ("Jay" being short for Jankowski, his last name), but that's over now. The book ends with Hudson and Addie holding hands.

For more detail, see the full Section-by-Section Summary .

If this summary was useful to you, please consider supporting this site by leaving a tip ( $2 , $3 , or $5 ) or joining the Patreon !

Book Review

The Teacher by Frieda McFadden wasn’t really on my radar before it came out earlier this month, but early reviews have been pretty positive. I was thinking about going see a friend’s band perform at a bar nearby tonight, but it’s been rainy and overcast this weekend, so I thought this could be a good time to stay in and read a quick, fun thriller instead.

To be honest, I wasn’t all that interested in the premise at first. It seemed kind of random to me — something about a jealous wife and something about a student who may or may not have had an illicit student-teacher relationship with a teacher who was fired. I mostly gave it a chance since other people seem to be liking it.

I sped through this pretty easily. The Teacher is a fast read. I try to appreciate when these mystery/thriller novels try to add depth and real psychological nuance to their characters and stories, but honestly there’s also something to be said about a thriller that just gets the job done as well. This is more of the latter variety.

The Teacher is all plot, drama, smoke and mirrors with a few twists along the way. It does get into some darker territory, but the book tends not to dwell on these things, too busy skipping along at a moderate clip to dive deep into the murkier aspects of its plot.

I liked that the story tries to go against what you might expect to happen in some ways. I also liked that there’s a pretty satisfying comeuppance at the end. There’s some small twists, and one big twist that I appreciated. Lots of good stuff going on here.

The writing is pretty much what you’d expect from a run-of-the-mill thriller, but it gets the job done.

Read it or Skip it?

I found The Teacher to be a satisfying and serviceable thriller. There wasn’t anything about it that really “wow”ed me, but I thought the plot was relatively believable as far as thrillers go, and I liked that it defied my expectations in some ways. I’m glad I picked it up. It’s a fairly generic mystery-thriller, but it’s a solid one that I enjoyed.

It might not end up being your favorite book or anything, but I imagine most mystery-thriller fans would find that this scratches that itch pretty effectively.

See The Teacher on Amazon.

P.S. The last psychological thriller I read, reviewed and enjoyed before this one was Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney.

The Teacher Audiobook Review

Narrator : Leslie Howard & Danny Montooth Length : 9 hours 34 minutes

Easy listening, good narration. A more than serviceable audiobook and a good option for listening to this book. I probably read half of this and listened to half of this.

Hear a sample of The Teacher audiobook on Libro.fm.

Book Excerpt

Read the first pages of The Teacher

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Eve has a good life. She gets up each day, gets a kiss from her husband Nate, and heads off to teach math at the local high school. All is as it should be. Except…

Last year, Caseham High was rocked by a scandal involving a student-teacher affair, with one student, Addie, at its center. But Eve knows there is far more to these ugly rumors than meets the eye.

Addie can't be trusted. She lies. She hurts people. She destroys lives. At least, that's what everyone says.

But nobody knows the real Addie. Nobody knows the secrets that could destroy her. And Addie will do anything to keep it quiet.

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Why didn’t Eve know Hudson was a student at the HS she taught? He was the QB for goodness sakes!

I think she did know — but we (the reader) just don’t get to find out until the end

That’s exactly what I’m thinking! It doesn’t make sense that she did know, since she thought he was married with a kid. Also- he must have known she was a teacher too. Did he just never want to mention it?

I went back and re-read all the Eve/Jay parts, and he never says “wife,” “child,” or that he’s married. Nor does Eve ever reference Jay’s wife or child, but only “that woman” and “the baby.” The author ties those loose ends up at the end when Hudson’s one-year-old brother is mentioned. But what is most telling is a line when Eve is narrating how she and Jay met, she says “there was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t quite place it at first.” She ends that chapter with a comment about wishing she and Jay could run off together, but then says she knows this will all end horribly. So brilliant! She TOTALLY knew he was a student, and why would it end horribly? Because she was sleeping with a student!