J. I. M. Stewart Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Anna Shapiro

Critical Essay by Anna Shapiro

The major ingredients in this staid little novel ["An Open Prison"] are: a proper English boys' public school; a boy whose father is sent to prison; an underclassman who is the grandson of the judge who sentenced the older boy's father; the father's prison break, and the subsequent running away of the two boys…. The story is narrated by Syson, the housemaster of the older boy, Robin, and from the outset clues pop up where there turns out to be no mystery…. As narrator, Syson comments on other people's remarks as being "oddly inconsequential," exactly what the accretion of clues turns out to be. His descriptions of characters are dully equivocal or weirdly at odds with his judgments of them; everybody's reactions seem to be either histrionically overstated or inappropriately muted…. Like so much else in the book, the digs seem to have no point unless it's all supposed to...
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