Long after I had any need of it, I discovered one of the best pieces of advice on surviving one’s schooldays. Of course, it came from Cyril Connolly, though not from Enemies of Promise. I found it while at university in Connolly’s brilliant pastiche Where Engels Fears to Tread:
In every group there are boys whom it is the fashion to tease and bully; if you quickly spot them and join in, it will never occur to anyone to tease and bully you. Foxes do not hunt stoats.
From reading Prep and Gentlemen & Players, two very different approaches to the school novel, Connolly’s theory still holds true: either belong or go unnoticed, for what middle ground there is tends to be populated by the perennially eccentric and the terminally bullied. Both Sittenfeld and Harris have opted for ‘invisible’ protagonists, seemingly voyeuristic characters hovering on the fringes.
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