May 24, 2012 / Leslie

Review: The Year of the Gadfly by Jennifer Miller

The Year of The Gadfly
by Jennifer Miller

Genre: Mystery
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publish Date: May 8, 2012
Format: Hardcopy | 374 pages
Rating: 4½ of 5

Mariana Academy, an east coast prep school with a gothic environment, is the setting of this well-constructed debut fiction by Jennifer Miller.

Iris Dupont’s parents and doctor feel a change of scenery is necessary and that Mariana Academy will provide the environment she needs to recover from the recent loss of her best friend. Instead she finds stressful surroundings in the form of bullying students and a mysterious secret society intent on exposing teachers, students, and the school for any indiscretion they can dig up. Iris, an aspiring journalist who’s mentor and frequent confidant is the great Edward R. Murrow, is determined to investigate this society and unravel the mystery.

The story is told from three different points of view, both past and present. Iris tells her story in the present. The second voice, from the past, is Lily, an albino girl who attended Mariana a decade ago. After leaving school it is rumored she is out of the county and has not been heard from again. Ironically, the home Iris and her parents are now renting is owned by Lily’s father, the former Mariana headmaster, and Iris has been given Lily’s old room. In it she finds a book, Marvelous Species: Investigating Earth’s Mysterious Biology, that will be significant in solving the mystery.

The third voice is Jonah Kaplan, a science teacher at Mariana and former student, who was in the same class as Lily. Jonah speaks in the present and occasionally flashes back to his time at Mariana. He has his own secrets to conceal and a twin brother that was Lily’s boyfriend who died in a car accident. Or was it a suicide?

I engaged in the story immediately. There were a lot of elements I liked: A bit of science (it’s ok if you are not a science-y type), a good mystery, Edward R. Murrow (even if he was in the form of an apparition), a secret society, or perhaps I just liked the characters. I especially enjoyed Iris’ witty conversations with Murrow as she conjured up his ghost to ask his advice. “What would Murrow do” became her mantra. When he began to appear without her summoning, I had to smile in delight.

While it seems like I’m describing a complex, wandering story with many directions, that definitely is not the case. Part of my pleasure while reading was discovering new bits and pieces of information about each character from each of their perspectives and putting it together. The story is tightly plotted with great dialog that moves easily between the speakers as their stories are woven together.

I’m not usually drawn to prep school type stories but this wasn’t a typical prep school tale nor is it aimed at the YA crowd, even though the main character is a teenager. I’m always a sucker for a well-drawn novel that alternates the past with the present and ties it all together in the end.

A Giveaway

Does this sound like a book you’d like to read?

I have a copy of The Year of the Gadfly to give away to one of my readers. Leave a comment by Sunday, June 3rd. The winner will be notified by email and will have 48 hours to respond with a mailing address, US/Canada only.

To read what other reviewers had to say, click HERE for the tour schedule and list of links. Some of them are also hosting a giveaway.

About the Author

JENNIFER MILLER, author of Inheriting the Holy Land: An American’s Search for Hope in the Middle East, holds an undergraduate degree from Brown and graduate degrees in journalism and fiction from Columbia. Her work has been published in the New York Times, Marie Claire, Men’s Health, the Christian Science Monitor, Salon.com, and others. She is a native of Washington, D.C. and lives in Brooklyn.

Connect with Jennifer: Website | Facebook | Twitter