2022/088: A Narrow Door -- Joanne Harris

2022/088: A Narrow Door -- Joanne Harris

An old St Oswald’s proverb goes: It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a woman to enter these gates. Well, not only have I entered, but now the gates are my gates, and the rules are my rules. The mistake you made was one of scale. Men always do, used as they are to taking the main entrance. Women must be more discreet. All we need is a narrow door. And when we have crept in unseen, like a spider through a keyhole, we spin ourselves an empire of silk, and fill you with astonishment. [loc. 108]

The final instalment in the St Oswald's trilogy, which began with Gentlemen and Players and continued with Different Class. For the first time in five hundred years, the headmaster of St Oswald's Academy (formery St Oswald's School for Boys: now co-educational) is a woman, Rebecca Buckfast, forty years old and fearsomely competent.( Read more... )