Caitrin Jones, a young American, is sent to an English boarding school after her mother dies of cancer. Thrust into an unfriendly world and ridiculed for her American accent, Caitrin lays bare her thoughts and feelings in a luminous stream-of-consciousness narrative. Memories of Isabelle, the best friend she left behind in Maine, give way to dreams haunted by images of an accidental death she believes they caused before she left for England; newly awakened hopes and desires interweave with the old as she gradually adjusts to her new environment. When she begins a relationship with her chemistry teacher, her language soars to astonishing heights; its painful end brings forth words and images that subtly reflect Caitlin's deeper understanding of herself and the world. Culminating in a startling revelation, Schooling is a work of great beauty and power, a tour de force of literary artistry, allusion and illusion.

Heather McGowan’s widely praised first novel introduces a literary artist of consummate skill, and a narrative voice of astonishing sensitivity and sensuousness. Tracking every mercurial shift of her character’s consciousness, the result is dreamy, disquieting, and achingly alive.

Schooling is a portrait of an adolescent girl, thirteen-year-old Catrine Evans, who following her mother’s death is uprooted from her home in America to an English boarding school. There she encounters classmates who sniff glue and engage in arson and instructors who make merciless fun of her accent. She also finds the sympathetic chemistry teacher Mr. Gilbert, who offers Catrine the friendship she so desperately wants–a friendship that gradually takes on sinister and obsessive overtones.