The Gifted School

A Novel

By: Bruce Holsinger

Narrated by: January LaVoy

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER

"Wise and addictive... The Gifted School is the juiciest novel I've read in ages... a suspenseful, laugh-out-loud page-turner and an incisive inspection of privilege, race and class." –J. Courtney Sullivan, author of Friends and Strangers, in The New York Times

Smart and juicy, a compulsively readable novel about a previously happy group of friends and parents that is nearly destroyed by their own competitiveness when an exclusive school for gifted children opens in the community, from the author of The Displacements and the Oprah Book Club pick Culpability

This deliciously sharp novel captures the relentless ambitions and fears that animate parents and their children in modern America, exploring the conflicts between achievement and potential, talent and privilege.

Set in the fictional town of Crystal, Colorado, The Gifted School is a keenly entertaining novel that observes the drama within a community of friends and parents as good intentions and high ambitions collide in a pile-up with long-held secrets and lies. Seen through the lens of four families who've been a part of one another's lives since their kids were born over a decade ago, the story reveals not only the lengths that some adults are willing to go to get ahead, but the effect on the group's children, sibling relationships, marriages, and careers, as simmering resentments come to a boil and long-buried, explosive secrets surface and detonate. It's a humorous, keenly observed, timely take on ambitious parents, willful kids, and the pursuit of prestige, no matter the cost.

A little like work.

I spent over 40 years working in the gifted and talented field. This felt like many of the issues I dealt with. The drama at the end was so fun!

loved it! couldn't stop listening :-)

anyone who has kids or teaches or deals with highly competitive people always trying to keep up with the Joneses, this book is for you you're really going to like it

Liked book, disliked narrator

I liked the book but wish it had a different narrator. The reader fluctuated the volume of her voice so often that I kept having to adjust my headphones. The author also portrays all the men’s voices in an overly dramatic way, which I found annoying.

Great book for Educators

This book showed both sides of the educational world. Both sides of characters were well-developed and the parents were a wide-array which was nice. Definitely a good book to read for people with kids or who work in the school systems!

Timely novel!

Has a similar feeling to Little Fires Everywhere! Very timely especially after the Ivy League admission scandals