Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes

Kathleen West’s upcoming novel, Minor Dramas and Other Catastrophes, tells the story of teachers, admin, parents and students at privileged Liston Heights High. The characters start as stereotypes — the crazed theater mom with a not-terribly-talented son, the liberal English teacher, the naive and overworked new teacher, the dully officious admin, the teenage girl following her Feminism 101 checklist — but soon the interlocking stories pull you in.

The setting is great, and while the characters are set in conflict with each other, pseudo-voluntary educational dumbfuckery is the real enemy here. It’s not enough for teachers to teach well and be liked by students, they also need to make a certain number of positive phone calls to students’ parents and be well-liked by helicopter mom brigade. It’s not enough for students to go to class and do their homework, they also need to be busy filling their future college app with sports, arts and community service. And, not everyone can be the lead in the school play (or the captain of the sportsball thingy), and that’s where high-strung helicopter moms come in. A college-prep high school is full of conflict and drama, and the story takes us through all different aspects.

There’s nothing minor about these dramas, and there are too many moments when the characters are Just Too Much for me. One English teacher is a little too amazing, and that made it hard to empathize with her. (All her lesson plans are tops and she has time to mentor a new teacher? Sounds fake, but ok.) Some of the others are a little too blindly self-centered. (No spoilers, but Lisa Lions, huh?) Some of the adult backstories were way, way too much, so it felt less like a slice-of-life novel about real humans at a real school, and more like a morality play about the dangers of helicopter parenting and the stress of high school.