Review: It works for me.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 01 5, 2013
It seems to me that Mr Greene has chosen to write from a stream of consciousness perspective what might be the thoughts of a young boy who has been terrorized by an unreasonably (to present day readers) strict and sadistic schoolmaster/teacher at an Irish Catholic school ca. 1960.  We learn that his mental and physical anguish is interrupted only by holidays away from the school when his thoughts seem to be very conventional for a young boy.  The boy's torment is increased by his mother's seeming ignorance of it.  Guided by her own dysfunction, rather than understanding and nurturing the boy, she contributes further to his terror by her own physical abuse of him.This is a short story and the reader is dropped into the boy's life and thoughts midstream, as it were.  We know very little of the boy's previous history.  We don't know whether the boy's truancy and minor transgressions led to the present terrorism by his teacher or whether the teacher's sadism led to the boy's present truancy and fear...although my leaning is toward the latter.By the end of the story we know that the sad situation will continue.For me the story worked.  I found myself quickly drawn to sympathy for the boy and easily accepting the story as told by Mr Greene.  I was sufficiently involved in the story that I was not bothered by presumed errors of grammar. Whether the story is "based on real events" or is a complete fiction is irrelevant to me--the message is the same. I believe the author succeeded in providing a believable and emotionally moving story. I recommend this story to others.