Seventeen
Author: Joe Gibson
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 356
Format: Hardback
My Rating: ★★★
Published by: Simon & Schuster
Pages: 356
Format: Hardback
My Rating: ★★★
It’s 1992.
Like every other seventeen-year-old boy, Joe has one eye on his studies, the other on his social life - smoking, Britpop, girls. He's looking ahead to a gap year full of travel and adventure before university when his teacher - attractive, mid-thirties - takes an interest in him. It seems like a fantasy come true.
For his final two years at school, he is bound to her, a woman twice his age, in an increasingly tangled web of coercion, sex and lies. Their affair, a product of complex grooming and a shocking abuse of authority, is played out in the corridors of one of Britain's major private schools, under the noses of people who suspected, even knew, but said nothing.
Thirty years on, this is Joe's gripping record of the illicit relationship that dominated his adolescence and dictated the course of his life. With a heady dose of nineties nostalgia and the perfectly captured mood of those final months at school, Joe charts the enduring legacy of deceit and the indelibility of decisions made at seventeen.
Like every other seventeen-year-old boy, Joe has one eye on his studies, the other on his social life - smoking, Britpop, girls. He's looking ahead to a gap year full of travel and adventure before university when his teacher - attractive, mid-thirties - takes an interest in him. It seems like a fantasy come true.
For his final two years at school, he is bound to her, a woman twice his age, in an increasingly tangled web of coercion, sex and lies. Their affair, a product of complex grooming and a shocking abuse of authority, is played out in the corridors of one of Britain's major private schools, under the noses of people who suspected, even knew, but said nothing.
Thirty years on, this is Joe's gripping record of the illicit relationship that dominated his adolescence and dictated the course of his life. With a heady dose of nineties nostalgia and the perfectly captured mood of those final months at school, Joe charts the enduring legacy of deceit and the indelibility of decisions made at seventeen.
My thoughts:
Seventeen is a powerful tale of lost youth and an abuse of trust. It is an engaging, uncomfortable, nostalgic, painful and powerful read.
The memoir explores consent, coercion, and the lasting impact of a teacher-pupil affair, as Joe Gibson recounts the affair he had as a schoolboy with his 35-year-old teacher, whom he calls Miss P.
The story begins with a 17-year-old Gibson, who has chosen to protect his identity by using a pseudonym, as he begins his studies at an elite private school. Having been awarded a bursary to attend the school and study for his A levels, Joe must adapt to his new surroundings very quickly. The school is 150 miles away from his family home, so his parents arrange for him to stay with friends closer to campus. They allow him use of their spare room, but otherwise don’t interact with him a great deal or keep tabs on his whereabouts.
Initially Joe settles in well, studying hard and falling in with a group of boys, making new friends. But then on a return visit home he learns that his parents are divorcing, and he’s left feeling helpless. At his most vulnerable, he bumps into Miss P in a pub near the school. He is visibly upset and she comforts him when he explains about the problems he has been facing at home. He soon develops an innocent crush on his teacher, unaware that it will eventually lead to years of grooming, abuse and manipulation.
After requisitioning Gibson to help her clear up her classroom one night after school, Miss P invites him to her flat where she plies him with wine. On the drive back to his house, they kiss and within a few weeks are having a full-blown affair. Initially, Gibson couldn’t be happier. He's isolated from his friends and family and made to think the relationship is what he wants.
This doesn’t read like a typical memoir. Gibson’s writing provides heightened intensity, the kind more frequently found in fiction, in which Gibson and Miss P are the main characters. He relives the confusion, teenage lust, depression, and fear he went through all those years ago. Gibson also speaks of the guilt he feels for lying to his family and friends, reinforcing how out of his depth, increasingly isolated and trapped he was.
His story is grippingly told, but I wish there had been less sexual content. Some of the abuse is recounted with long sex scenes that are presented in awful, almost pornographic detail. I found these moments so uncomfortable that I very nearly stopped reading altogether. Also there are so many scenes like this that the sexual encounters become almost quite repetitive at times. It was just a bit much and with this in mind; readers should take note of the various trigger warnings before reading Seventeen. These include sexual assault, grooming, coercive behaviour, and manipulation.
After finishing school, we are told that the couple married and had children over the next decade until eventually the marriage foundered, but we are not actually given much information about their later life together. What little there is comes in a nine-page addendum to the main text, with a new character that appears out of nowhere to tell Joe that he had been the victim of abuse, having been only “a kid” at the time of the first encounter.
At the end of the book, with a note of sadness Gibson reveals how the title refers not just to his age when the affair began, but the number of years it took him to see Miss P’s actions for what they truly were. There are many alarming moments in Seventeen, but it was this part that shocked me the most.
Thank you to Tandem Collective and the publisher for gifting me an early copy to review.
Overall reaction:
Seventeen is a powerful tale of lost youth and an abuse of trust. It is an engaging, uncomfortable, nostalgic, painful and powerful read.
The memoir explores consent, coercion, and the lasting impact of a teacher-pupil affair, as Joe Gibson recounts the affair he had as a schoolboy with his 35-year-old teacher, whom he calls Miss P.
The story begins with a 17-year-old Gibson, who has chosen to protect his identity by using a pseudonym, as he begins his studies at an elite private school. Having been awarded a bursary to attend the school and study for his A levels, Joe must adapt to his new surroundings very quickly. The school is 150 miles away from his family home, so his parents arrange for him to stay with friends closer to campus. They allow him use of their spare room, but otherwise don’t interact with him a great deal or keep tabs on his whereabouts.
Initially Joe settles in well, studying hard and falling in with a group of boys, making new friends. But then on a return visit home he learns that his parents are divorcing, and he’s left feeling helpless. At his most vulnerable, he bumps into Miss P in a pub near the school. He is visibly upset and she comforts him when he explains about the problems he has been facing at home. He soon develops an innocent crush on his teacher, unaware that it will eventually lead to years of grooming, abuse and manipulation.
After requisitioning Gibson to help her clear up her classroom one night after school, Miss P invites him to her flat where she plies him with wine. On the drive back to his house, they kiss and within a few weeks are having a full-blown affair. Initially, Gibson couldn’t be happier. He's isolated from his friends and family and made to think the relationship is what he wants.
This doesn’t read like a typical memoir. Gibson’s writing provides heightened intensity, the kind more frequently found in fiction, in which Gibson and Miss P are the main characters. He relives the confusion, teenage lust, depression, and fear he went through all those years ago. Gibson also speaks of the guilt he feels for lying to his family and friends, reinforcing how out of his depth, increasingly isolated and trapped he was.
His story is grippingly told, but I wish there had been less sexual content. Some of the abuse is recounted with long sex scenes that are presented in awful, almost pornographic detail. I found these moments so uncomfortable that I very nearly stopped reading altogether. Also there are so many scenes like this that the sexual encounters become almost quite repetitive at times. It was just a bit much and with this in mind; readers should take note of the various trigger warnings before reading Seventeen. These include sexual assault, grooming, coercive behaviour, and manipulation.
After finishing school, we are told that the couple married and had children over the next decade until eventually the marriage foundered, but we are not actually given much information about their later life together. What little there is comes in a nine-page addendum to the main text, with a new character that appears out of nowhere to tell Joe that he had been the victim of abuse, having been only “a kid” at the time of the first encounter.
At the end of the book, with a note of sadness Gibson reveals how the title refers not just to his age when the affair began, but the number of years it took him to see Miss P’s actions for what they truly were. There are many alarming moments in Seventeen, but it was this part that shocked me the most.
Thank you to Tandem Collective and the publisher for gifting me an early copy to review.
Overall reaction:
