THIS RULER

A debut literary novel presents a kaleidoscopic view of the everyday passions and politics of high school.

Seniors Sialia Torres and James Malachite are students at Elysium Hills High School. Sialia studies art and finds beauty in the world around her while James plays soccer and goofs off with his friends. Their social circle revolves around the science classroom of Zach Tyndall, a 10-year veteran teacher who believes in his students even as he has started to become jaded by the job. Tyndall and the other teachers are angered over a new curriculum introduced by Principal Jonathan Stufa and an education consultant. “Spring Forward” is designed by a publishing company to align with standardized tests, though the teachers know that little of the money for three days of in-house training will actually make it to the classroom. The students chafe under the new conditions while learning about biology, art, and history as well as figuring out what they want out of life. A chunk of obsidian that Tyndall keeps on his desk becomes a window into the story of Cualli and Anci, two Aztec teens resisting conquistadors five centuries in the past, whose lives and growth mirror that of Sialia and James. Duff’s prose is highly lyric and fluid, zooming in and out of moments in a way reminiscent of modernist writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf: “So here they all sit together in the sunny science room; a particular place that most of these kids have spent so much time in over the last four years. Though not necessarily in a together fashion. It is a didactic poem unraveled, out of time.” The short chapters are essentially vignettes that jump around through time, and the narrative that emerges—such as it is—is fragmentary and somewhat difficult to parse. While some of the writing is strong, the dialogue is often awkward and unnatural. Moreover, the author’s palpable interest in what he views as a corrupt school system feels incongruous with the book’s mercurial structure. The novel demonstrates clear ambition, but it is not very much fun to read.

A choppy, experimental tale that follows some students and their teacher during a shift in their school’s curriculum.