The Old Place

By: Bobby Finger

Narrated by: Barrie Kreinik

Winner of the Crook’s Corner Book Prize

One of Vanity Fair's Best Books of the Year

A bighearted and moving debut about a wry retired schoolteacher whose decade-old secret threatens to come to light and send shockwaves through her small Texas town.

Billington, Texas, is a place where nothing changes. Well, almost nothing. For the first time in nearly four decades, Mary Alice Roth is not getting ready for the first day of school at Billington High. A few months into her retirement—or, district mandated exile as she calls it—Mary Alice does not know how to fill her days. The annual picnic is coming up, but that isn’t nearly enough since the menu never changes and she had the roles mentally assigned weeks ago. At least there’s Ellie, who stops by each morning for coffee and whose reemergence in Mary Alice’s life is the one thing soothing the sting of retirement.

Mary Alice and Ellie were a pair since the day Ellie moved in next door. That they both were single mothers—Mary Alice widowed, Ellie divorced—with sons the same age was a pleasant coincidence, but they were forever linked when they lost the boys, one right after the other. Years later, the two are working their way back to a comfortable friendship. But when Mary Alice’s sister arrives on her doorstep with a staggering piece of news, it jeopardizes the careful shell she’s built around her life. The whole of her friendship with Ellie is put at risk, the fabric of a place as steadfast as Billington is questioned, and the unflappable, knotty fixture that is Mary Alice Roth might have to change after all.

Contrived ending

I have grown tired of books that develop characters and a mystery of great interest that then discard all logic to make a happy ending. This book is one of those.

Surprising and devastating and delightful

I never stopped getting something other than what I expected from this book, and being happy to. For one thing, it was an unusual format. Not much happens in real time, but you’re constantly dipping into the past to get new context for what does happen, and it’s surprising every time. It’s a delicious way to unveil a narrative, and it led to a huge amount of tension towards the end. Really deft debut!

A story of life

After storms and difficulties we are taken to a place of a happy ending not a bad thing in this day and age, I listened through a day of COVID isolation in September 2023, thinking of our own struggles of the last couple of years. I enjoyed the reprieve,

The twist of the plot

It started out slow and a bit confusing but it picked up and I began to enjoy it.

Not much of a story

2.5; a little better than just ok. However, not really much of a story, when all is said and done… and read. A very unlikable main character, and even the “revelations” of the secrets that have made her so bitter never excuse her. I mean, WHO would march into the classroom of the teacher who has replaced you after your retirement, albeit forced, on the first day of school and so gleefully work to undermine her?!?! Why should anyone give that gross behavior any kind of pass? But I did listen to the whole book, so maybe I’m the fool. Anyway, there were flashes of interest along the way, and the narration was exceptional.