Book Review: The Things That Matter Most by Gabbie Stroud
The staff of St Margaret’s Primary School are hanging by a thread. There’s serious litigation pending, the school is due for registration, and a powerful parent named Janet Bellevue has a lot to say about everything. As teachers they’re trying to remain professional, as people they’re unravelling fast.
There’s Tyson, first year out of uni and nervous as hell, Derek the Assistant Principal who’s dropped the ball on administration, Bev from the office who’s confronting a serious diagnosis, and Sally-Ann who’s desperate for a child of her own.
Thank goodness for kids like Lionel Merrick. Lionel is the student who steals your heart and makes the whole teaching gig worthwhile: he’s cheerful, likeable, helpful – and devoted to his little sister Lacey. But Lionel has a secret of his own. As his future slides from vulnerable to dangerous, will someone from St Margaret’s realise before it’s too late?
As secrets threaten to be exposed and working demands increase, each staff member struggles to recall the things that matter most.
A moving and compelling novel about teachers and their students by the acclaimed author of the bestselling books Teacher and Dear Parents.
Published by Allen & Unwin
Released August 2023
My Thoughts:‘Caring is hard work. But for me, teaching is both. Teaching and caring are one and the same thing. People don’t realise that. They’re squeezing out the time we need for caring. It’s all documenting and accounting and data. It makes the job something else, takes away from the caring. But then,’ Derek raised his hands, a sign of exasperation, ‘when the caring doesn’t happen as it should, everyone’s up in arms.’
I’ve worked in education since 2010, specifically in schools for ten of those years. As a result, I have a lot of friends who are teachers. I’ve taught, in the role of facilitator of career education. I love working in the education sector, although at the beginning of 2021 I took a break and have subsequently moved from the public system to the private and my role is now not based in schools and is staff related rather than student. There’s no way I’d ever be a teacher, the reasons why so perfectly encapsulated within this brilliant, yet utterly heartbreaking novel.
This review could easily become an essay on why I think the education system is broken, failing both students and staff, over and over. So, I’ll rein it in and simply say, this book says it all. We alternate between three teachers and the school secretary, with inserts of class writing by grade six student Lionel. Altogether, this gives the reader a view on how utterly strapped staff working in schools are, the absolute rubbish they have to put up with from bureaucracy and parents without boundaries, and the many, many ways, society has evolved into this beast that is both self-absorbed whilst micromanaging the stuff that is none of their business via social media.
I was both enraged and heartbroken over this novel, the shock twist sadly less of a shock than it should have been, upon reflection. Bravo to Gabby Stroud, who has already written groundbreaking non-fiction on this topic. This is a brilliant novel that I recommend to every single person. Five stars.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
