· Wilberforce by H. S. Cross (mid 80’s). Heather has the distinction of being both a student and a colleague. There’s a mystery here, but the mystery is how did she do this? I notice on blogs about this work that British men say that she captured their own youth. How did an American woman get it so right? Wilberforce tells the trials of coming of age in a British boarding school for boys, a society unto itself, rife with conflict, jealousy, and outright sadism. We attribute much of what happens in Lord of the Flies to the absence of adults. Wilberforce shows us that the presence of adults really does not make much difference. (spoiler alert –maybe not entirely). For all his confusion, Morgan Wilberforce emerges as a sympathetic young man badly in need of guidance. Within this society, a cardinal sin is “blubbing.” So, emotions are pushed into odd places. The book is not without hilarity: asked to explain Donne’s sonnet “Batter my heart, three-person’d God,” Wilberforce speculates that it might be a three-headed Hindu god. I had to watch a cricket match on YouTube to understand a whole section.
