...wise and addictive ... The Gifted School is the juiciest book I’ve read in ages. It’s a testament to Holsinger’s storytelling prowess that a novel revolving largely around something called the Cognitive Proficiency test (or the CogPro, as everyone refers to it) manages to be both a suspenseful, laugh-out-loud page-turner and an incisive inspection of privilege, race and class. By the time the characters get swept up in the second round of the admissions process...the lying, jealousy and backstabbing reach staggering heights ... Holsinger doesn’t shy away from the moral questions implicit in defining what it means to be gifted without acknowledging that not all children start from a level playing field ... A novel’s success or failure lies in a series of small choices on the part of its author. At nearly every turn, Holsinger makes smart ones — right up to the book’s stunning final lines.
Holsinger captures the language of anxious parenting: the neuro-jargon, the tone of chirpy terror ... Intriguingly, Holsinger tends to filter the story through his least sympathetic characters ... Atik’s is the only plotline with real stakes—elsewhere, the reader feels as though she is watching an enthralling, faintly distasteful sporting event, like a hot-dog-eating contest. There are moments of white-liberal affectation so sublime that they waft off the page like laughing gas ... And yet the oblivious parents are more than fodder for hate-reading. Holsinger renders his helicopter moms and soccer dads so precisely that one understands their motivations, even feels their longing and pride ...The book exposes how easily a mix of good intentions, self-delusions, and minor sins can escalate into the kind of skullduggery that might prompt an F.B.I. sting ... Holsinger leaves the political implications...largely unexplored. What he does show is...these parents committing, in Rose’s rueful words, a 'collective crime against childhood.' While the adults of Crystal dream of meritocracy, their kids bear the burden.
One wants to say that The Gifted School is preternaturally timely, but it feels, instead, like a faint imitation: a story dripped from the headlines. And even if current events didn’t overshadow The Gifted School, the novel’s opening would still feel weighed down by its desultory pace ... Although The Gifted School starts too slowly, once the story gets moving, it builds impressive momentum ... There’s plenty of wry humor in Holsinger’s portrayal of this dysfunction, especially the moral gymnastics that liberal parents perform to preserve the purity of their ideals ... But Holsinger is not at heart a satirist, or at least not a mean one. These harried parents and their children are drawn with real sensitivity, and despite how horribly some of them act, he doesn’t sacrifice anyone on the altar of his wit. His regard for their dreams and fears, regardless of their weaknesses and failings, remains deeply humane. Indeed, for such a relentless diagnosis of the toxic culture we’ve created, The Gifted School is, ultimately, a surprisingly hopeful novel. There’s a sweetness to its resolution, a satisfying possibility that no matter what monsters we parents are at times, we can still graduate to something better.
...nothing new. The Gifted School's plot is far less extreme than the college admissions scandal, mainly because it centers around transgressions somewhat smaller than bribing the Georgetown University tennis coach to pretend your child plays tennis ... Their liberal-centrist idea of goodness could be fertile ground for social commentary, but Holsinger rarely delves deep into political issues. The novel inhabits a safer tension: Its characters believe they are good people, but are not. The problem is that most of them are bad characters, too ... Gifted School is an exercise in frustration, with only the sourest glimmers of schadenfreude. Unlike the real-life college admissions scandal, the cheating on offer here is too familiar to be entertaining. The bad behavior is predictable enough that the novel's suspense leaches away by its midpoint, leaving us with nothing left to do but wonder if four privileged children will get into a magnet school.
Although the novel’s point of view shifts with each chapter, Holsinger has made an interesting and smart decision to offer the perspective of only one of the four moms ... Yes, it’s a lot of characters to keep track of. But the novel’s frequent perspective shifting, interspersed with faux newspaper articles, texts, Facebook posts and video narration, keeps the story moving through the months leading up to the gifted school’s opening ... An astute reader may predict part of the outcome, but the story still offers satisfying surprises
Happily, [Holsinger] remains a master of clever plots and suspense. The result is a rare sort of book, a domestic drama with the pace of a whodunit ... They lie, cheat and sabotage one another. Holsinger deftly manages all their plots and schemes, showing how each character’s fate influences the others ... The novel is full of dark and funny moments. At the same time, it’s not exactly news that the upper middle class is full of hypocrites, in Crystal or elsewhere. Novelists have been skewering the bourgeoisie since there have been bourgeoisie to skewer. The best of them unearth the all-too-relatable hopes and fears beneath the bad behavior...Holsinger is better at satirizing his characters than baring their souls ... Perhaps because the novel is so complicated and fast-paced, it never goes too deeply into how the characters feel or why. In the climactic scene, a disastrous open house at the gifted school, all the threads of Holsinger’s plot come together, even as Rose and her friends’ lives fall apart. In this moment it’s easier to admire Holsinger’s ingenuity than feel his characters’ pain ... Still, on occasion, one will have a flash of insight.
...[a] biting, astute, immediately engaging novel ... Holsinger perceptively portrays how each couple copes with the stress each family faces in addition to the usual money problems, sibling rivalries, and marital difficulties they camouflage. Given recent college-admission scandals, Holsinger’s tale about money, connections, and education couldn’t be more timely.
The novel's depiction of the ensuing devolution is grounded in acute social observation—class, race, privilege, woke and libertarian politics—then hits the mark on the details as well ... Holsinger's...pitch is close to perfect. The subject of parents charging past every ethical restraint in pursuit of crème de la crème education could not be more timely, and the Big Little Lies treatment creates a deliciously repulsive and eerily current page-turner.
Too many characters? Too many scenarios? The possibilities may seem overwhelming, to be sure, but Holsinger is very particular with details and patient in building the coming crisis. He does not repeat incidents, but instead prompts readers to remember and make connections for a backstory, trusting us to do our job ... There are the necessary outliers of satire.
...sharply entertaining ... This depiction of the depths to which some parents will stoop to win social advantage for their offspring makes for a smart, piercing novel, and timely given recent headlines.
The plot rips along, though the sporadic interjection of teenage social media posts feels clumsy and more suited to adolescent chick lit, and there are page-turning twists at the end. In a post-Huffman world, the detail may not shock but the emotions will be painfully recognisable, not least those triggered by the plight of the genuinely bright immigrant child ... goes to the toxic heart of the 'best for my child' mantra by which all parents today are encouraged to live ... I was left yearning for more of the inner world of these women and their partners ... Even without the deeper psychological dive, this is a funny and perceptive account of a dilemma that is being played out all over the globe. It has more than a touch of Liane Moriarty’s Big Little Lies so I predict the next step will be a TV series – Desperate Parents? Huffman can take a lead role and truth will finally have merged seamlessly into fiction.