Roberta “Bobby†Blanchard was a professional hockey player until an injury ruined her career. Now she’s the new Games Mistress at an elite girls’ boarding school, and feels out of her league among the talented faculty, who are experienced in more ways than one. Flirting with students, teachers, townies, and disaster, Bobby manages a busy love life while also starting an intramural hockey team and investigating a murder.
It’s easy to pinpoint this playful novel as a parody of 1960s pulp fiction, but there’s a lot more going on here. There is mystery (the murder investigation), romance (Bobby plays the field but ends up a happy monogamist), sports (everything from hockey to modern dance), and goth (a blundering ingénue! a deathbed confession!). The sex is mostly offscreen, but there are lots of butch/femme distinctions, as well as far more sports and education metaphors for sex than you’d think possible. The tag line says it all: “She schooled them in field hockey … and desire.â€
Nolan’s second novel (after Lois Lenz, Lesbian Secretary) is a treat, a romp, a book to bring to the beach (and peep over at the cute young femme on the next towel).
Recommended, especially for fans of Mabel Maney.
Reviewed by, Daisy Porter
San José Public Library
