The Teacher's Daughter

Don Precosky teaches English at the College of New Caledonia and is the
co-editor of Four Realities: Poets of Northern B.C.

The Teacher’s Daughter is something old and something new. The two main characters, Janice Harper and James Hicks, both suffer from the “weekend man” syndrome which Wright probed so well in his first novel (The Weekend Man, Signet, 1970). They stare at the television, hang around malls, and brood alone. Sadness permeates their lives like a persistent, dull headache.

The new lies in Wright’s choice of characters. He uses more than one main character; he features a woman in a major role; and, with James Hicks, he ventures outside the middle class. Class is more of a barrier to Wright than sex. Janice Harper is convincing; Hicks is not. When she does something, she acts from perceivable motivations. Hicks, though, is a type. He acts the way he does because that (according to Wright) is the way working-class people do things. If one believes Wright’s portrait of Hicks and his friends, all working-class men do is swill beer, punch women, and dream of having oral sex performed on them by teenage girls.

Despite this stereotyping, The Teacher’s Daughter is a good read. It will enhance Wright’s already healthy reputation.